The Dork Sandwich: An iCarly Love Story
by Falling Further
Summary: This is a simple, timeless story told in as complex a manner as I can manage. A boy in love is pushed into a pseudo-relationship with another, causing revelations in all parties. When emotions collide with equal passion, how can one choose? Creddie/Seddie
1. A definitive rejection of sorts

Disclaimer: This work of fan fiction was created as an act of catharsis and tribute with no desire of profit. All characters contained within are the property of Dan Schneider and Nickelodeon

* * *

The bell rang in mute tones which were sweetened by their meaning. All around the classroom children popped up from their desks, eager to leave the classroom before the teacher could assign any additional homework. None of the students' paces to leave the room, however, matched that of the brown haired teenager who had spent the entire period stealing dreamy glances at the room's front door exit.

Freddie left the classroom with a smile on his face in spite of the ache he was feeling in his neck. Leaning his head on his left hand with his face angled towards the door hadn't been an ergonomic position. The simple explanation for his unusual stamina towards an ache that would have driven him to the nurse on a normal day was that he had made plans with Carly and Sam to go to the mall after school. Generally this wasn't a particularly inspiring event, but this morning Sam had fulfilled her duties as a troublemaker to the fullest, with a witness of the vice-principal variety standing nearby. Immediately after she had finished stuffing Gibby into a locker (a remarkable feat considering Gibby's size in relation to the locker) the vice principal had slapped her with an hour-long, after school detention. Rather than meet up with Sam after her punishment at the mall, Carly had decided that they would leave the school together after Sam finished her incarceration. This meant that he was scheduled for an hour of time alone with Carly.

As he hurriedly strode towards their designated meeting place, a stairway close to the classroom that Sam was due to be imprisoned within, he did his best to stretch out his neck. His odd movements drew a few perplexed looks from his fellow students, but he paid them no attention. Such was the power of his love for Carly: it could to purge his insecurities, leaving his thoughts and actions unhindered; like a sun piercing through a thick throng of clouds.

* * *

Carly heard Freddie before she saw him. He was whistling, "You Are My Sunshine" again. He always seemed to be whistling that song. She looked up from her algebra notebook just as he was rounding the corner, hooking her hair around her her right ear and favoring him with a bright smile which he immediately returned fourfold. He was such a silly guy, deriving immense pleasure from something as simple as her smile. Closing the book and placing it neatly on her lap, she asked, "Ready to blow another hour of our lives waiting for Sam?"

Freddie's smile widened as a thought took over his mind. "You know, if I get to spend an hour alone with you every time Sam gets detention, I'm going to have to start paying her for her services."

After a sharp laugh, Carly warned him, "You'd be broke within a week."

"Probably," conceded Freddie with a nod. He finished with a solemn expression, "It would be worth every penny, though."

Carly shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly. "If you say so." He was always saying sweet things like that, so it didn't have any sort of impact on their conversations. She scooted over, giving Freddie room to sit down next to her on the step. Freddie accepted her offer graciously, her very presence already turning his ordinary day into a glorious one.

* * *

Drifting lazily somewhere in the hazy border between dreams and reality, Sam barely heard the teacher's voice as a faint echo over a mist shrouded field announcing, "And that marks the end of your detention. I hope you all have reflected properly on what you have done to earn your seat here."

While Sam struggled to open her eyes, her fellow delinquents prepared to leave. Eventually it was the annoyance of the noise rather than any sort of willpower to wake up that brought her back into the realm of awareness. Even before her sleep-hooded eyes had adjusted to the light, she was shooting off warning glares at any moving object around her. After her field of vision had adjusted properly she focused it on a particularly noisy object directly in front of her, which she quickly hurled an eraser at.

The eraser bounced noisily off of the shaggy head of the behemoth who had been sitting in front of her throughout the detention. The over-sized senior had earned his detention seat after a football player complained that he had cut into the lunch line. Following his ejection from the lunch line by a tired-looking, hair-netted lunch lady, the detainee had pounced on the football player. After a brief scuffle that football player was carried to the nurse's office and the giant was given a one way pass to detention.

Feeling the soft object bounce off of his head, he whirled around with murder shining dully in his piggish, brown eyes. He was not expecting the cool, malevolent gaze of the girl whose head was barely raised off of her desk. The staring contest was brutally short, and in moments the juggernaut's glare had melted into a half apologetic, entirely terrified smile. He knew somewhere in the back of his mind that he outweighed her by at least 150 pounds, but a primal instinct honed from years of avoiding the gaping, deadly maws of carnivorous predators warned him that this girl was dangerous.

The sight of the gigantic kid meekly turning around, quietly packing up his belongings, and tiptoeing out of the room brought a satisfied smirk to her lips. Her head was on its triumphant way back down to her arms when she realized with a start that Carly and Freddie were waiting for her nearby.

The monitor looked on impassively as Sam hopped out of her seat and began to hurry out of the classroom. This one was one of the most frustrating students she had come across in her long teaching career: a bright kid with no ambition to do anything but cause mischief. The teacher, who had said a polite farewell to every student that had exited the classroom, merely exchanged stares with Sam as she passed her desk. The both knew that she would be back soon. It wasn't until Sam was outside of earshot that the teacher allowed herself a disappointed sigh.

In her excited state, Sam was dangerously close to skipping down the hallway over to the rendezvous point. These spontaneous trips to the mall were always fun. First and foremost, it kept her out of her house. An afternoon not spent yelling the same thing at the same person over the course of endless hours was inherently a good one, in her not-so-humble opinion. Secondly, Carly had a habit of buying food and drinks, taking a lone bite or a sip, and deciding that she didn't want them anymore. This was a situation that Sam always capitalized on. Last, but not least, these trips usually provided her with ample opportunity to torment Freddie. It was her fortunate circumstance that her easiest target was also her favorite one. Seeing him turn his distraught face in her directions felt so very right.

She found her friends engaged in a familiar position: Carly speaking animatedly about something and Freddie gazing dreamily at her. A shadow crept into her happy mood as neither of her two friends seemed to acknowledge her at first, but she knew just the way to brighten it again. She sauntered up to her friends, and was unsurprised when her arrival only caught the attention of Carly. Freddie didn't seem to recognize that she was there until she interrupted Carly's conversation with a, "What are you guys talking about?"

Carly's ears reddened slightly. She knew that it wasn't an appropriate conversation to be having with Freddie, but they had run out of things to talk about and she had started with the thing foremost in her mind at the moment. Keeping her eyes down, she answered, "I was telling Freddie about a cute guy in Biology."

Sam had to fight hard to swallow back the laughter threatening to burst forth from her mouth. He really made it far too easy, but it would sting more if she delivered this with a straight face. Her head angling towards her target, she asked, "So you're sitting here listening to her talk about another guy?"

Freddie could feel his own face burning up, but he refused to let Sam dampen his good mood. "We're friends. Carly can tell me about whatever she wants, and I'm glad she's sharing with me."

Sam took in his forced nonchalant tone with a narrowing of her eyes. It appeared he was going to make her work for it today. That meant that what she was going to say next was entirely his fault. "So you've come to terms with reality?" she asked with a sinister curling of the right side of her lips.

"What do you mean?" questioned the confused young man with a sidelong glance at Carly.

"Carly's never going to go out with you," uttered Sam with a fervency that matched a forsworn oath.

It had been a nagging thought at the edge of his consciousness for as long as he could remember. A building block of despaired dreams that was always most transparent when Carly told him about another of her crushes, like she had been doing moments beforehand. Its sudden materialization in the world outside of his doubts hit him like a physical blow, and Sam had the smug satisfaction of watching his upturned face crumple into a grimace.

Carly immediately went into damage control mode. The brunette girl bounced up from her seat and loudly announced, "Let's start heading towards the mall!"

Sam would have none of it, however. Turning towards Carly with a triumphant glean in her eyes, she insisted, "You would never go out with him, right?"

The brunette was fully prepared to ignore the blonde's question, but Freddie's face turned towards her, begging for an answer with large, doe-like eyes. Sighing inwardly, she looked at Freddie and repeated the standard, "I only see you as a friend, Freddie."

Freddie quickly averted his eyes as his vision took on a blurry aspect. He experienced a flash of annoyance with himself for not being more resilient to that phrase. He had certainly heard it enough times over the years.

Sam only removed her eyes from the boy's defeated face after Carly added a foot stomp to her disapproving glare. As she hopped around on her left foot she pondered if she really had gone a bit too far. She hadn't seen his eyes tear up like that in a while. She had precious little time to chew on the thought since Carly redoubled her efforts to get the group moving towards the mall. As soon as Sam had taken her first steps down the stairwell, her mind had entirely shifted towards food.

* * *

Freddie flopped down into his computer chair with a lazy thud that seemed to hang in the air. His eyes lifelessly drifted towards the switched off computer screen as he went over the last few hours in his mind. The mall expedition had been ruined by Sam's cheap shot at his emotions. The shock had forced him into a mechanical state in which he agreed or disagreed when absolutely necessary, and completely avoided every other interaction.

Of course Carly had repeated the exact same phrase so many times before that it almost seemed like a mantra, but for some reason the words had hit him especially hard that time. He had to admit that when it came to putting him down, Sam had perfect accuracy. The content of his conversation with Carly along with the casual reflexiveness of Carly's rejection seemed to be a lethal emotional combination. Whatever the reason for its effectiveness, Freddie was now forced to think about his relationship with Carly. His heart and his brain were involved in a bitter dispute, and they refused to focus on anything else. His devotion towards the girl was unwavering; indestructible, but there was a nagging voice deep down that warned him that a guy like him never stood a chance with a girl like Carly.

Clearing his thoughts away with a vigorous shaking of his head, he instinctively reached out for the power button to his PC tower. His eyes closed as his ears acclimated themselves to the soft whirring of the computer cooling fans. The familiarity of the noise had a therapeutic effect, and before his operating system had fully booted he had returned to a normal emotional state.

He spent a few moments looking at his desktop background. He had scoured the Internet for a nice looking background for his newest science fiction obsession, and finally found one with the help of his fellow SciFi enthusiast Jeremy. Down the left side of the screen, bold silver letters spelled out the name of the show, "Starcruiser Odysseus". Set in an embattled engineering bay, the nerdy chief engineer of the spaceship had been knocked down the the ground and was looking up in surprise at the gorgeous communications officer who was offering him a hand as she smiled down on him gently. The damaged, darkened lights of the bay along with the colorful laser beams flying over the two characters' heads gave the whole scene an urgent, somehow romantic quality. Although he usually favored this couple over all of the others on the show because of how closely it resembled his own relationship with Carly, today he found he hated it. Television couples like that one were what filled him with false romantic hope in the first place.

Shaking the thought off, he opened up mIRC and immediately maximized the program, hiding the lying couple behind a blank, white screen. His hands went through the familiar motions of opening up his favorite Starcruiser Odysseus chatroom, Star Hub Odyssey, and surely enough there was SgtSneezy. He could always count on Jeremy to be online. Grinning, he opened up a private chat with him, beginning the conversation by thanking him for finding his background image.

They spent a good half hour discussing the latest episode of the series, then the rest of the hour predicting what the next episode was going to be like. Online conversations like this allowed Freddie to escape his thoughts of reality, and for the rest of the time he was on the computer he didn't think twice about Carly. It wasn't until his head was nestled comfortably in his pillow that the thoughts rushed back into his mind, wrenching his stomach into painful knots.

* * *

Spencer had just finished rounding a corner of his sculpture when he heard knocking emanating from the front door. His forehead knotted when he took a look at the clock and noticed the late time, but he shrugged the thought off and went to answer the door in full regalia. A quick opening of the door revealed a drowsy Freddie. Tilting his head, he questioned, "Bon jour monsieur Freddie! What can I do for you today?"

Silence hung in the air while the boy with one foot in dreamland adjusted to Spencer's outfit. Like all of his costumes, it appeared as though he had put a lot of effort into it ... for about ten minutes. That would be enough time for him to grow bored with the endeavor and move on to the adventure that he was dressing up for. Today he had managed to toss on a bright yellow, plastic apron emblazoned with a four-leaf clover, a white hat that resembled a puffed up mushroom at the top, and an outrageously fake mustache that was so outrageously fake that his mind almost mistook it for being real. But that outstretching mass of handlebarred hair couldn't be real because he would have notice Spencer growing it out, wouldn't he?

Spencer hopped backwards, slapping at Freddie's right hand which had moved to touch the mustache seemingly of its own accord. "Hands off ze mustache!" When consciousness seemed to return to the boy's eyes, he repeated, "What are you here for?"

"Came to see Carly," mumbled Freddie, his eyes still focused on the twirled mustache.

"She eez upstairs, most likely awake," announced Spencer with a dismissive wave of his arm towards the staircase.

Freddie halted his march back into the kitchen by asking, "What are you working on?"

"Ah, step into ze kitchen, young man," commanded Spencer as he stepped back, allowing Freddie his first glimpse at the monstrosity sitting on the kitchen within a focused implosion of kitchen utensils, a mixture of opened, empty, and full packages of meat, and used pots and pans was a basketball sized meatball. The meat had not been cooked yet, so it stood there in its raw redness, threatening to fall apart at any moment.

"So it's a meat sculpture?" asked Freddie as the thought popped into his head. It was actually more of a statement than a question.

Spencer moved forward suddenly, holding his arms outstretched to give his piece of art a human frame. "Zis eez much more zen un simple meat sculpture!" exclaimed the artist with a voice over-saturated with false indignation. "Zis piece eez un statement!"

"That meatballs need to be bigger?" questioned Freddie with a shade of rascal to his grin.

"Non, non, mon ami. Look inzide ze meatball." He indicated a nearby knife with another wave of his hand and a generous wink.

Freddie did as he was told, cutting a small chunk out of the globe of meat. He found that after the first few cuts, the consistency of the meat changed considerably. The chunk of meat fell away after a few more cuts, revealing a different kind of meat filling, a more pinkish, sandwich sliced kind. Squinting at the new meat, he guessed, "Is the statement that meatballs are hammy on the inside?"

"Non, non!" exclaimed Spencer, his hand waving as though he were clearing the air of smoke. "You zink too zmall. Zis meatball represents ze world's thoughts about food. Zey zink zer eez un overabundance, but zat view eez full of ze baloney!" He punctuated his sentence by grabbing the baloney that Freddie had cut out of his sculpture and popping it into his mouth. He wasn't prepared for the uncooked portion of ground meat beef that was sticking to the back of his snack.

As Spencer made a face and spit the baloney back out onto the counter, Freddie turned his attention back onto the meatball. "It is pretty impressive, but wasn't it expensive to fill this thing with baloney?"

Spencer's eyes turned away from the boy suddenly before he added in a much lower voice, "Eet may also be full of ze styrofoam."

"Wait, what was that last thing you said?" asked Freddie as he leaned towards the childlike adult.

Sighing, Spencer turned towards Freddie and announced, "I couldn't afford 20 cubic centimeters worth of baloney, so I cheated a little bit with a sytrofoam ball." He paused to take an admiring glance at his work. "Eet eez magnifique, no?"

Freddie nodded his agreement. Spencer always did things on a grand scale. As his head tilted and his eyes took in the great meatball from a new perspective, he pondered, "So what up with the French accent?"

"Eet eez not convincing?" asked Spencer as he twirled his mustache between his right thumb and pointer finger.

Turning his head, and his attention, back to Spencer, Freddie said, "It's a decent, fake, French accent, Spencer, but didn't the meatball come from Italy?"

"Of course it came from Italy," answered Spencer reflexively before the realization of his error hit him. "Oh..." escaped from his lips, and in moments he had stopped twirling his mustache. His eyes turned towards the ceiling as he scanned his memory for the constitution of an Italian accent.

His presence completely forgotten, Freddie escaped up the stairway as Spencer stood still muttering phrases like, "That's a spicy meat-a-ball!" and "It's-a-me, Mario!" under his breath.

* * *

Carly sat in her comfortable, multi-colored bean bag chair hugging a yellow pillow close to her body as she half-heartedly watched whatever happened to be on television at the moment. Her eyes followed the police officers chase down a fleeing suspect, but her mind was focused on the relationship between her two best friends. She sensed at the very least that Sam was attracted to Freddie. There was no other explanation for why she went so far out of her way to bother him. It would also explain the triumphant gleam she had in her eyes whenever she had his attention.

Freddie on the other hand only had eyes for her. She couldn't remember a time when he wasn't trying to earn her favor or sneaking furtive glances at her when he thought she wouldn't notice. To that day, he had been the only boy to ever profess his love for her. She believed that he meant what he said, and she was very flattered but ...

A knock on her bedroom door interrupted her thoughts. A quick peek at the clock told her that it was 11 pm. "What do you need, Spencer?" shouted Carly.

A closed door-muffled voice announced, "It's Freddie."

Carly jumped out of her seat. What was Freddie doing here at this hour? On her way to her bedroom door, she glanced at a mirror and confirmed that she looked fine, albeit in an unmarked, old gray t-shirt and white-striped, pink pajama pants. She opened her door and found that Freddie was in a similar state, although his flying fish pajamas included a buttoned up top. Something didn't seem right about his face, though. It looked ... slackened. Cocking her head to the side, Carly asked, "What's up, Freddie?"

Freddie's eyes dropped to the ground for a second before raising steadily to meet her own eyes. In a toneless voice that matched the quality of his face, he asked, "I need to know, Carly."

Carly's brow furrowed as her thoughts reached a confused state. Unable to understand what he wanted, she simply parroted, "Need to know?" Freddie had been walking towards her since being let into the room, and he didn't stop until she found him standing with his face mere inches from he own. The closeness forced Carly to look up slightly to look into his brown eyes. When had he become so tall? The face she was looking into and the faint whiff of whatever medicine his mother had forced on him that night all belonged to Freddie. She wondered why it felt so weird to be standing close to him.

"What you said earlier. What you always say," he finally continued after stopping himself from falling into her dark eyes. He looked at her with naked abandon as he unleashed the question that had denied him months of sleep over time, haunting him as soon as his head hit the pillow. "Is it the absolute truth? Will you really never go out with me?"

They both knew that this was a turning point in their relationship. Carly's mind quickly ran through the possible scenarios of either of her answers. If she said it wasn't, she would be salvaging Freddie's feelings for the short run. Unfortunately, she would also be filling the poor guy with false hope. She would never see Freddie as anything other than himself. When she caught sight of him, her heart wouldn't start fluttering uncontrollably like it did when she saw someone she had a crush on. Well, today was a special instance because he had never before stood so close, staring down at her with intense, passionate eyes.

If she told him the truth, she would probably break his heart then and there. He would mope around for an indeterminable amount of time, performing all of his duties as a student and as a tech producer adequately, but with no spirit. Given time he would lift himself out of the funk, however, and possibly even move on to other girls. He would have a real chance at a relationship, not one of those fake things he began with other girls just because he knew they were interested in him first. Maybe Sam would even have a shot with a guy that Carly knew she thought about from time to time when she was alone. Carly certainly never thought about him when they were apart. Well, she did, but just in a general well-being kind of way. She would think about what he was doing, if he was okay. Not about how tall he would eventually become, or how piercing his eyes could be up close.

Inexplicably she found herself gripped by those thoughts at the moment. She again brought her gaze up to his eyes, and almost immediately after making eye contact averted her gaze as she felt her face begin to heat up. What was going on? This was only Freddie. It shouldn't feel weird standing so close to him.

Her carefully planned, filtered thoughts flew out of her mind in another rush of heat. They were soon replaced by very uncharacteristic thoughts about Freddie. Confused more than she had ever been in her life, she answered with the first thing that came into her head.

* * *

"So what did she ... Ah choo! ... say?" asked Jeremy (the boy who was also affectionately and unaffectionately nicknamed Germy) his eyes bulging out of their sockets as he leaned forward so much that he was threatening to fall off of the picnic table bench he was sitting on top of.

Freddie's eyes continued to focus on students in the distance, tracing the profiles of random students with his vision. After a deep breath, he answered with the same lifeless tone that he had used throughout the entire retelling of the story, "She said, 'Yes'."

"Yes!?" exclaimed Germy suddenly, his perpetually stuffy tone risen to near clear levels by his excitement. Something was off. For a few moments, he wondered why his friend wasn't hopping off of the seat. Then his mind deciphered the code and he sunk back into the picnic table until his back was pressed against the table top. Tentatively he asked, "Yes is ... Hah chee! ... bad, huh?"

Freddie finally turned his head towards his friend for the first time since they sat down at the table, which was located a few feet from a side-entrance into the school. Germy had caught him moping as he was about to enter the school and asked him what was the matter. Freddie had responded with the entire story, starting from Sam's detention. He felt bad for dumping all the story on his currently snot wiping friend, but he needed to share it with somebody or it was going to tear him apart from the inside. The only other person he could possibly tell the story to was Sam, and she was more likely to pour salt on the open wound than lend a sympathetic shoulder to cry on. His face displaying a wan smile, he pondered out loud, "Maybe it's not such a bad thing."

Jeremy attempted to figure out how getting turned down cold by the girl of your dreams could not be a bad thing. His inability to come up with anything better produced a ponderous silence. The seconds turned into minutes, varied only by the procession of students into and out of the school.

Freddie finally saved his friend from the futile turning of his brain by stating, "Maybe I can start dating other girls."

There was a sneeze of indignation from the heavier boy before he accused, "You've dated other girls already."

"Those didn't count," said Freddie with conviction. "Even when I was going out with those girls, my heart still belonged to Carly."

"So it ... Aaah keeh! ... doesn't anymore?" doubted Germy with a matching twist to his words and his eyebrows.

Freddie's eyes shifted back to his friend, but even though Germy could see Freddie's eyes looking in his general direction, he knew they were focused on a thought in his mind. Freddie would get the exact same look whenever he was working on any kind of problem. Finally, in a voice not much louder than a whisper, he said, "It can't."

The look on Freddie's face suggested that he doubted his own words as much as Jeremy did. Aware that he was directing the conversation onto rather painful grounds, the stuffy-nosed teen attempted to alter the mood by asking, "So what kind of girl are you looking for?"

Freddie shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly before turning his attention back to the nameless students. "I'm not picky," he confided after an extended pause. "Someone's who's into the same stuff I am would be cool."

"You should look for a girlfriend in Star Hub!" blurted out Germy as soon as the thought popped into his head.

Both of the teenagers burst into uncontrollable laughter after Jeremy's ludicrous suggestion. Each of the boys knew that out of 100 visitors to the chatroom, maybe two were from the fairer sex. And that was on a good day. Or a "sexy day" as the other chatroom members would joke.

The meaning of their laughter flew over the head of the girl who had been crouched behind a nearby tree. A smile was on her face, but it had more of a demonic gleam to it. After all, the plan that was beginning to form in her mind that had produced the smile had similar characteristics.

If she could only find out where this "Star Hub" place was.

* * *

It was dark by the time Germy finished up in the AV clubroom. He had been editing a video for use in a Starcruiser Odysseus fan video. The video was a joint project with Freddie, but the lovesick teenager had been so out of it that Germy had sent him home hours ago. It had been the noble thing to do, but Germy found himself regretting his decision. The lights were still on in the school and he knew that there were janitors cleaning up some section of the building, but the sight of halls that were overcrowded in the daytime being empty was inherently creepy on its own. Add to that the fact that he had felt like he was being watched over the past couple of hours and you had one supremely paranoid teenager.

Germy hustled to his locker at a world-record speed walking pace, sneezing occasionally not out of necessity but out of the comfort of hearing his sneeze echoing off of the hallway walls. The familiarity of the sound eased the tension out of his shoulders, and by the time he arrived at his locker he was completely relaxed. Completely unprepared for the flashing mass of blond energy that exploded from its hiding place across the hallway and pinned him up against his unopened locker.

As the boy struggled to maintain his balance and his handle on reality, he heard words growled out in the following order, "What is the 'Star Hub'?"

Germy had realized by this point that his assailant was none other than Sam. Rather than relaxing the boy's tension, it built on top of it. This was, after all, the closest a girl had ever come to him. Ever.

Sam soon came to a realization of her own. Germy was too stupefied at the moment to answer her question. She attempted to bring him out of his daze using the only method she was familiar with: intimidation. Holding his shoulders pinned against the cold, metal lockers with only her right forearm, her head tilted downwards until her hair fell forward, shrouding the entire upper half of her face in a tangle of curly blond hair and shadows. The only defining feature Germy could make out were her lips, two thin lines which slowly moved apart to reveal even, white teeth in a half smirk that promised pain for non-compliance. His nervous gulp was halted halfway as she aggressively whispered, "Tell me what I want. Or else."

"It's an mIRC chatroom for Seattle based fans of the show Starcruiser Odysseus!" answered Germy with such speed and volume that he didn't have the breath to sneeze. Which was just as well because they both knew that if Germy sneezed on Sam's face he would be purchasing a one-way ticket to the nearest emergency room.

Sam released Germy and began walking away. The released boy immediately took in great gasps of air as his lungs enjoyed their non-compressed state. Just as he had fully recovered, he heard Sam shout over her shoulder, "Tell Freddie that we talked, and I will turn your underwear into a hood. Instantaneously."

Germy nodded rapidly to her back. He had no doubt that she was capable of pulling off that feat, since he heard that Gibby had suffered that exact same fate about a month ago. Sam was really ridiculously strong, like Captain Rose from Starcruiser Odysseus. She had held him against the locker so strongly. Her breath had smelled like turkey on rye. He felt a blush growing on his cheek as he remembered how close her face had been to his own. His right hand reached up to touch the quickly bruising spot on his chest where her forearm had connected.

Sam had noticed none of this, already dumping Germy from her thoughts. The demonic grin reappeared on her face, as she began to skip down the empty hallway. An internet chatroom was perfect. It was time for the ultimate prank. Freddie would never know what hit him.

* * *

Author's Notes: Once upon a time, I was a fan-fiction newbie who was searching the web for romantic stories involving my favorite couple. One day, I found a story that created a love triangle that involved my favored couple and another girl. The story was a masterpiece. By the end my heart had been run through a rather demanding emotional gauntlet, and while my favored couple did not "win" in the end, I was extremely thankful for having been able to read it. It was so good that it drove me to start writing stories of my own.

The reason for this author's note is to let you know that it has always been one of my goals to write a love-triangle as compelling as the one that started me on this writing path. Anyone familiar with my other fan fiction stories will know that I began and abandoned a Hannah Montana fan-fic based on a similar triangle. The reason for its abandonment were fundamental shifts in the Hannah Montana canon; things I couldn't reconcile with my story without major reconstruction of both the characters and the plot. Dan Schneider has a long track record of not changing the characters and their circumstances on a whim. I have high hopes that I will achieve one of my first goals with this story.

Hopefully I have managed to keep a few of you interested throughout this entire marathon of a first chapter. I will gladly admit that I already have a significant amount of this story planned out, just waiting for me to take breaks playing World of Warcraft to flesh it out.

See you next time, and thank you for reading both my story and my thoughts,

Falling Further


	2. The best laid plan, the worst execution

Sam went through a week of preparation before she was ready to step into the Star Hub. Her first challenge was figuring out what mIRC was. Unfortunately for her, Germy had actually pronounced it as 'merc'. She therefore spent a fruitless afternoon looking at websites about mercenaries before she had the brilliant idea to look up popular chat programs. Once she had cleared that initial hurdle of actually finding the program, she worked herself into a basic proficiency with it by entering random rooms and goading anyone who wasn't AFK into an argument. Her natural aggression paid dividends, and in no time she had been crowned a troll multiple times, having gained the ability to harass multiple, complete strangers with easy fluidity.

The next step was to watch as many episodes of Starcruiser Odysseus as she could stomach. As it turned out, she could stomach all of the episodes that they had released up until that point. Sam was pleasantly surprised to discover that the show wasn't that bad for an object of nerd worship. It was kind of like watching one of those soap operas her mom was addicted to with a healthy dose of aliens, robots, and lasers. Unsurprisingly, Sam found the battle scenes particularly engrossing. So much so that by the end of her run through the series, Sam could identify both the model name and pilot of the vehicles on sight.

She recognized after a couple of episodes the romantic coupling on the show that Freddie would be most emotionally invested in. The relationship between the chief engineer and the communications officer mirrored the one between himself and Carly so closely that it was almost eerie. The two actors even looked similar to her two friends. The biggest difference between the show couple and her friends was that it looked like the show couple was going to get together in the end. Unfortunately for Freddie and luckily for Carly, television wasn't like real life.

Still, Sam could use this to her advantage, and she did just that as she entered into the final act of preparation: creating a nickname. Up until that point, she had used the handle "BetterThanYouNerds". It was suitable for the initial stages where trolling was the name of the game, but it would need some tweaking for this next stage in the plan's evolution. She wanted Freddie to feel comfortable enough around her Internet alias to be himself, so she eventually went with EngiFanatic. It was definitely blunt, but it would get the job done.

She entered the chatroom unobtrusively, or as unobtrusively as a possible girl could enter a chatroom full of geeks. Her name turned out to be a dead giveaway because it took a special kind of guy to admit that they admired another guy, and the chances of that type of guy watching Starcruiser Odysseus were next to nothing. Her arrival drew an initial flurry of interest in which the regulars welcomed her heartily, proclaiming it a "sexy day" among cries of "woot!" after she confirmed that she was in fact female. She was then allowed to fade into the background while the room resumed its familiar cycles of venting, gushing, speculating, and debating.

As it turned out, Sam had two clues to guide her on her hunt for Freddie's nickname. The first clue was that she knew that Freddie liked to type as close to grammatically correct as he could manage. The strict sense of discipline his mother had instilled within him demanded no less. Secondly, she knew after a quick glance at the room's roster who SgtSneezy was. Immediately after making this particular discovery she received the urge to smack him upside the back of his head for choosing such a stupid name. She only managed to resist the urge because Germy wasn't in the room with her. In the game of Sam's priorities, laziness often triumphed over aggression. By paying close attention to the people who cared about the correctness of what they were typing (which was an unsurprisingly few number of people) and how they interacted with Germy, Sam was able to deduce who Freddie was with close to 100% accuracy. It didn't hurt that Germy and half of the room referred to the person under the nickname as Freddie.

When she finally figured out which nickname was Freddie's, she received another violent urge. This one was a two-parter, as she felt the compulsion to both hit herself for not noticing the nickname immediately and Freddie for living up to his reputation of being a dork. A quick ethical check assured her that she couldn't hit herself, however, so she would just have to hit TheTechPro twice as hard the next time she saw him.

* * *

Freddie gingerly sat down on the black, leather computer chair, wincing slightly as he eased the aching skin and muscle on top of his shoulder-blade against the back of the chair. Earlier that day, for no reason whatsoever, Sam had grabbed his arm and flipped him onto the unforgiving hallway floor. When he asked her forcefully from his position on the ground what the assault had been for, she just glared at him and told him coldly, "You know what you did." Freddie had been in the process of arguing that he did not in fact know what he did when Sam noticed Germy, chased down the boy who started fleeing as soon as he noticed her eyes on him, and slapped him upside the back of his head.

"She must be on her period," muttered Freddie to no one in particular as he flicked on his computer. In minutes he had logged onto Star Hub, and his eyes focused on the scrolling text just as quickly. It turned out to be scrolling with frantic intensity, the bulk of the text containing an extended argument between MechaGeek, the resident vehicle expert, and the new girl, EngiFanatic. A quick message to Germy revealed that MechaGeek had made a statement about Captain Rose's mechanical armor that EngiFanatic had quickly refuted. The room regular had immediately fired back that she was a noob, and it had escalated from there. Germy added as an aside that he had looked up the original point of contention, and it turned out that EngiFanatic had been right.

After parsing through a little of the verbal battle, Freddie was more inclined to believe that the fight had degenerated rather than escalated. The quips contained no hints of mechanized armor or Captain Rose. Instead, MechaGeek's constant angle of attack (in euphemistic terms) was the new girl's lack of a Y chromosome and the resulting physiological differences. Even without the chromosome in dispute and the testosterone that normally comes along with it, EngiFanatic was definitely holding her own. Her comebacks seemed to center around MechaGeek's inability to leave his room or get a girl to even glance in his direction.

While it was entertaining to see MechaGeek, one of the room's most abrasive regulars, get chewed out with a thoroughness that Sam would appreciate, Freddie's sense of chivalry eventually kicked in. He stepped into the argument from the shadows, private messaging both combatants and placating them as best as he could. He knew he had some weight with MechaGeek having both been part of the chatroom for almost as long as the show had existed, and he hoped that his experience with his two female best friends would help him to deal with EngiFanatic. He accomplished his goal in mere moments, and the chatroom argument, like many Internet disputes, ended not in an apology, but quietly dwindled away into nothingness.

His conversation with MechaGeek died with the argument, but Freddie found himself drawn into an extended conversation with the new girl. It had started with her thanking him for stepping into in to help her (Her words were literally: thxs for stepping in to help me), and turned into a general discussion of the series. The conversation had the same quality as one with Germy, but it was like seeing the series from a new perspective. After all, he and Jeremy tended to focus on the same things.

Hours flew by in what felt like moments, and before he knew it, it was already 2 o'clock in the morning. A peek at the room roster revealed that everyone had either signed off or gone AFK for the night. Everyone except for the new girl and himself. Realizing that he had to work on the iCarly website before he went to bed, he told EngiFanatic that he had to do some stuff before he went to bed. Even having typed that, he didn't log off of mIRC until he received confirmation that she would be back on the next day.

Sam was still in shock as she clicked on the "Shut Down" button. Her mind couldn't grasp that it was already 2 o'clock in the morning. She inwardly whined that she would only be getting six hours of quality bed time. It was all stupid Freddie's fault. If he hadn't made the conversation so interesting, she could have left the chatroom two hours ago still having achieved her goal.

As she climbed into her undecorated, twin size bed, she consoled herself with the thought that her plan was working perfectly. The wicked grin was back in full force by the time she pulled bed linens up to her neck and nestled her head deep into her pillow. In two weeks, she would reveal her identity, crushing Freddie under a devastating mixture of shame and ridicule.

The thought stayed forced into the forefront of her mind until she drifted into a Starcruiser Odysseus filled dream. As she lost conscious control of her thoughts, it disappeared with one last whisper.

"Two weeks ..."

* * *

Two **months** later ...

"So I was thinking that we should bring Jake Crandall back to the show," said Carly, her eyes focused on Freddie.

Aware that Carly was expecting some kind of answer from him but unable to comprehend what she had just said, Freddie took a shot in the dark. He nodded his agreement and half spoke, half mumbled, "Yeah, that sounds great."

Carly crossed the room to stand in front of the stool that Freddie was perilously perched on top of. Her closeness at least seemed to pick him up out of his sleepy stupor, albeit partially. His posture straightened slightly and his eyes remained open and focused on her own. There was still a drowsy sway to him, however. She widened her stance to shoulder-length and rested her fists tightly on her hips as she accused, "I thought you hated him."

Freddie spent a moment in puzzled silence before asking abashedly, "Hate who?"

"You're really not listening!" exclaimed Carly in astonishment as a cold feeling crept into her body. Over the weeks, Carly had sensed a change in Freddie's attitude towards her. There had been a gradual cooling in his offhand compliments and a distinct absence of the secret glances he would take when he thought no one was looking. This was the first time she could ever remember him not hanging on to every word she said, though. She had reasoned out that something like this would happen when she first thought of telling him that she would never go out with him a couple of months ago, but for some reason she was not emotionally prepared for what was happening. It was as if she never really expected it to come about.

"I'm sorry, Carly," apologized Freddie immediately. "I want to pay attention, I swear. It's just ... I didn't get much sleep last night." He didn't feel the need to further clarify that he had been chatting with EngiFanatic until 5 o'clock in the morning.

"You and Sam both," sighed Carly, indicating the bean bag behind her with sweep of her left arm. Freddie took his eyes off of Carly long enough to take in the sight of a softly snoring, blond girl curled up into a ball with her head resting on her raised right forearm. When his eyes returned to Carly, she softly admonished, "Look, I expect this from Sam because she's Sam, but this is one of our iCarly planning meetings, Freddie." Her hands dropped from her waist, accompanied by a dipping of her head. Looking at Freddie through the thin veil of her eyelashes, she continued, "I need you here with me, awake and alert. I need your thoughts, your input. I really can't do this alone."

"Carly, I already said I was sorry, and I meant it," assured Freddie. His posture straightened even further, and it appeared as though he had shaken off the sway. "I promise I'll pay attention from now on."

To Carly, his voice seemed sincere, but there was something else to the tone. She couldn't put her finger on it. And why weren't her words and stance melting him away? Weeks ago, if she had just said his name softly he would have happily jumped off of the roof of the apartment building. Now he was just sitting there silently, watching her with impartial eyes. There wasn't even a smile on his face. Then it hit her. The shade of emotion she had sensed in his answer.

It was annoyance.

"You should go, Freddie," commanded Carly coldly.

"What are you talking about?" asked Freddie. "We haven't even discussed the show yet."

"Just go, Freddie," repeated Carly, with an even harder tone to her words.

Freddie finally caught the shortness of her words and immediately took an appraising glance at his friend. He could tell from years of observing her that she was angry. Her body had tensed up and her jaw was clenching on the left side of her face. The sight of Carly angry threw off the rest of his sleepy pallor. He could count on his right hand fingers the number of times he had seen the normally cool-headed girl like this. He hopped off his stool, moving close enough to place his right hand on her left shoulder and softly question, "What's wrong, Carly?"

With an explosive movement Carly's left arm flung his hand off her shoulder. She glared at him once before turning to her side and focusing her eyes on a corner of the room opposite of Freddie.

Freddie cradled his right hand in his left as though it had been crushed. The expelling of his hand hadn't hurt him physically, but there was a lingering emotional component to the action. It felt like Carly had just rejected him all over again. His throat clenched up as he feverishly scanned his mind for something he had done to offend her other than almost falling asleep at this one meeting. He could think of nothing, however.

He almost apologized one more time, but realized somehow that his words would just make things worse. After one more lingering, pitiful glance at Carly, he picked up his laptop and proceeded out of the room.

Carly stood perfectly still for minutes after Freddie had gingerly closed the door behind him. The silence in the room was countered by the cacophonous whirlwind of Carly's thoughts, however. The wrenching of her gut that had begun when she realized that Freddie had not been listening to her had only intensified as she had commanded him to leave and given him the cold shoulder. She felt an intense disgust with herself for taking out on Freddie something that she had brought onto herself. She had known this was going to happen; had planned out the scenario in her head. Why did it have to hurt so badly? He must hate her now. Why couldn't things just have stayed the same as they were before? Everything was so perfect before.

The brunette teenager took small, slow steps towards the corner her eyes had been focused on before. Once she found herself a few feet from the vertically striped, blue wallpaper, she fell into a crouched position, hugging her knees to her body as her thoughts reached an even louder volume. Thankfully the thoughts were quickly abandoned as her hands found themselves involved in a furious battle that required all of her concentration: trying to catch the tears that were falling from her eyes before they reached her cheeks. Maybe if she caught the tears, they wouldn't count.

* * *

Sam opened up her eyes and uncurled herself in a languid stretch that involved all of her body from her feet to her outstretched hands. It had been a great nap, and now Sam was ready to grab something to eat. She found after a quick glance at her surroundings that she was in Carly's room. That was great news, because the food was always better at Carly's house.

As she stood up and began to move towards the elevator, she noticed Carly sitting on the polka dot covered back of an over-sized dinosaur plushie, staring outside of the arching window. Arching her right eyebrow high on her face, she walked towards Carly. The girl didn't seem to notice her presence until she placed her right hand on her shoulder and asked, "Carls?"

Carly's body gave an involuntary twitch of surprise. After her head turned and she found Sam standing over her, Carly's lips formed into a smile. "Have a good nap?"

The blond girl's eyes narrowed as they noticed the red puffiness around her friend's eyes. It looked as though Carly had been crying. "Are you alright Carly?" Sam asked as she took a seat on the floor in front of the dinosaur.

"My eyes are red, huh?" smirked Carly at Sam. After turning her attention back to the world outside of the window, she asked offhandedly, "Hey Sam. Have you noticed anything different about Freddie lately?"

Sam's breath caught in her throat. She figured that she now knew more about Freddie than just about anyone short of his mother after two months of constant online chatting. But that wasn't the context that Carly was asking the question in. Carly didn't know about her secret Internet alias. No one did, and Sam had to make sure no one ever would. "No, not really," she eventually answered, her own eyes drifting away from her friend.

Carly's vision focused on a man in a tan brown, trench coat walking down the street, swinging a closed umbrella back and forth with his right hand. He seemed happy with life. After the man had disappeared from her sight and her mind returned to her own thoughts, she stated flatly, "He's been growing colder to me, Sam."

A frown formed on Sam's face as she asked incredulously, "He's been mean to you, Carly?"

Carly shook her head quickly. "No, not mean," she said firmly. Her voice trailed off as she finished, "Just not the same."

"Maybe he's found another girl to like," said Sam with a shrug. The sentence came out reflexively, and was attached to a warm sense of satisfaction. After identifying the emotion a sense of self loathing began to creep into her.

"That would make sense," said Carly, chewing the idea over in her mind as her teeth chewed on her lower lip. Two months would have been plenty of time to develop another crush. She could develop one over a class period, after all.

Sam's eyes lifted towards her friend as she scrutinized her face. She could tell that Carly was doing her best to keep it emotionless. As she pondered what feelings she was keeping under check, she questioned, "It's not like you like him or something, right?" The question drew a flicker of emotion from Carly's face. When her friend allowed the question to hang unanswered, Sam prodded, "Carly?"

Carly shrugged exaggeratedly and took a deep breath before answering, "Maybe I did," she shook her head suddenly before correcting, "do. In my own way."

There was a sharp pain coming from Sam's chest, making the girl wonder if her stomach was reacting badly to something she ate. Sure, she couldn't remember ever reacting badly to food, but this constricting feeling was just as new to her.

The brunette girl's eyes slid over to her friend. Looking at Sam from the corners of her eyes, she asked, "What should I do?"

Ignoring the increasing pain Sam directed a half-smile at the brunette girl as she answered, "Don't worry about it, Carls. The problem is probably going to take care of itself."

Carly's brow furrowed in confusion. "How do you figure?"

Sam threw her friend a shrug of her own. "I just have a feeling," she lied. Inwardly, she planned to end her "relationship" with Freddie by pulling the plug on the prank. Sure, the dork was a surprisingly useful vent for her emotions, and she was enjoying her new ability to accurately predict Freddie's thoughts from his actions, but in the end it was just a prank. She could stop it for Carly.

She repeated the last sentence to herself over and over as she left the Shay apartment. It seemed to lessen the intensifying ache coming from her chest.

* * *

As Sam had expected, he was waiting for her in the chatroom by the time she got back home. She halfheartedly attempted to come up with a way to end their late-night chats as they went through another full blown one. She sincerely had the intention to end them, but found her thoughts blocked by the usual feelings she had when she was chatting with Freddie online: a deep sense of relaxation and piece of mind that she had never experienced before. These conversations provided a sense of escape; perhaps due to her Internet anonymity, or maybe because of Freddie's extreme interest in her innermost thoughts. The thoughts she had never shared with anyone else before. The question about why she looked forward to the conversations with Freddie was deep one, however, and Sam didn't have the ability to ponder it as she shared her private thoughts with Freddie.

The conversation lasted until well after two o'clock in the morning, which was a standard stopping point for them. Sam was prepared to click the disconnect button when Freddie suddenly typed, "PAM WAIT!"

Furrowing her brow at the fake name she had fed Freddie, Sam typed back, "what up?"

"We're both from Seattle, right? I want to meet you."

A cold feeling crept into Sam's skin, the same one that appeared when she found herself caught in an important lie. "..."

"I don't care what you look like. I'm not too great looking myself."

"..."

"I like you, Pam. I think about you during the day, and I look forward to these chat sessions more than anything else in my life. Even something I used to devote my life to entirely a few months ago."

Sam could feel a warmth spreading over her, briefly overtaking the feeling of dread. In moments the warmth faded and the dread was back in full force, however. She had somehow entirely lost control of the situation. The prank had gone so horribly wrong. Panicking, she clicked the disconnect button. After staring at the blank, disconnected screen for a moment, she proceeded to shut down the computer as quickly as she could and all but ran into her bed.

Huddled under the covers of her bed, she was actually surprised when she felt wetness sliding down her cheek. After berating herself for being an idiot, she slipped into Dreamland doing her best to pretend she wasn't weeping.

* * *

Author's Notes: I honestly don't know how many readers are going to make it to this point. My first chapter only received one review after all. It was a rather glowing one, thank you Mappadouji, but still. Anyways, thank you for making it to the end of the second chapter. You're allowing my writing ability some sense of validation, and I truly appreciate you taking the time to read my current pile of words.

From here, I have about one or two more chapters planned out depending on to what extent I manage to flesh out my skeletal outline. One side-branch has so much comical potential that I fear it will take a life of its own, detracting heavily from the main story. I think this crying fest could use a bit of laughter, though. We'll see what happens. Like I mentioned last chapter, a story like this has been a long-time goal of mine. I can only hope I'm doing proper respect to the image of my idol.

See you next chapter,

Falling Further


	3. To regain what was once lost

It is amazing how many thoughts can fly by over the course of a handful of spoken sentences. Under pressure, the entirety of a soul's contents can be thrown through the brain's filter in the span of a terse conversation. The strain of this process provides the main deterrent for this type of discussion, and so it is very rare to observe this process in action. For the curious, Sam and Carly actually experienced this phenomenon firsthand.

A week went by before Carly came to Sam with the news that she already knew yet dreaded hearing just the same. The two girls were relaxing on Carly's living room couch watching a generic family sitcom. The family's hefty father had just chased his lazy son out of the kitchen with the skateboard he had tripped on when Carly turned towards Sam and said casually, "He hasn't changed back at all." After looking at the profile of Sam's face for a moment, she continued with a sigh, "If anything, he's becoming more detached."

Sam kept silent externally, but was internally yelling at herself for being so weak. Every time she sat down at the computer she intended to halt the perpetual online chats. They stole so much of her sleeping time, and didn't really provide her with anything she could put her finger on. She couldn't even figure out why she kept signing back on. They never even talked about the show anymore, instead focusing more on small observations each had made during the day. Sam hadn't realized how closely Freddie paid attention to the world about him. There was a fastidiousness to his astute observations that suited him, however. He could read the expressions of most of the people around him with almost crystal clarity, even, she found with surprise, her own. Sam had also discovered that when he wasn't standing near to her she never really had the urge to ridicule him. Maybe because she didn't need to be sure that she had his attention away from Carly. Where did that thought come from?

She even employed multiple stratagems to stop the conversations. Her initial attempts in which she attempted to flat out tell him that she no longer wanted to continue the late-night meetings were always halted by the knowledge that she didn't really want to stop them. A master of mischief she might be, but she always felt a twinge, however slightly, of guilt whenever she was forced to lie. She felt that somehow betraying his naked trust would boost the magnitude of that guilt to new heights. That option thwarted, Sam then attempted to inject some meanness into the conversations in hopes of driving him away of his own accord. Unfortunately she found it difficult to utilize her normal acerbic banter with the boy without revealing that she knew him outside of the computer screen. Her only possible points of attack came from their online conversations, and Freddie turned out to be a lot more witty and careful with his words when he had time to think out a response. Her last ditch effort had been to go cold turkey. She lasted three hours into the first night before she buckled and logged into the chatroom. He was waiting patiently for her when she arrived. When he asked her what had held her up, she had made up a lame excuse about an obligation to her friend.

It became clear to the blond girl that she would not be able to stop their correspondence under her own power. She didn't allow her mind to chew over why this was so. Instead, she quickly surmised that she could easily achieve her goal if she borrowed some of Carly's power. Fighting through a clenching of her stomach that appeared as soon as she formulated a feasible plan, she said in as nonchalant a tone as she could manage, "You should just tell him how you feel, then."

Carly's face was quickly enveloped in a shade of flaming scarlet. She always found it next to impossible to confess that she liked someone to their face, only able to share her feelings under duress, and usually after they had confessed that they liked her first. This was also with guys that she didn't know too well, so that the relationship's boundaries and terms hadn't been established. Under these conditions, it was far easier to change things around. Carly had known Freddie for far too long and far too well to utilize this particular bypass of her emotional blockade. Plus she didn't even know if she liked Freddie. She had said that she did to Sam a week ago, but that had been a defensive statement when her heart was feeling raw. Sure he was the nicest guy she had ever met in her life and he was rapidly growing into the cute guy that he would eventually become, but Carly wasn't sure if these new feelings were because she liked him or because she missed the way he used to long for her mere attention and the positive benefit it had had on her self-esteem. No matter the reason, the embarrassment still remained as tangible as the air that she was steadily breathing into and out of her lungs. It's existence forced her to shake her head and say, "There's no way I could do that."

Sam's hunter's instinct kicked in, sniffing the hesitance in her friend's words. Allowing her no respite, she turned her face towards Carly and asked with a touch of faux-amusement to her voice, "Why not?"

The red shade on Carly's face darkened further, lending weight to her claim that, "It's too embarrassing."

Sam allowed her attention to return to the television where the father had caught up to the son and was giving him a firm tongue lashing. The vehemence of the man's words matched the mood of her internal battle, which had reached a new plateau by this point. After all, she had given Carly the option. What right did she have to feed her to Freddie? But it was for a good cause. To get her out of this disastrous prank that Sam couldn't seem to get herself out of. That she didn't want to get out of. There was that stupid, unknown voice again. It had been popping in with regular frequency, hindering and sometimes halting some of her normal, daily activities. Her usual victims got through most days unscathed, and Sam hadn't earned a detention in weeks. As if in defiance of the voice, Sam broke her private deadlock. "Don't be so blunt about it, then," Sam heard herself say. When Carly turned towards her in confusion, she continued, "Ask him if he wants to watch a chick flick with you."

"A chick flick?" Carly asked out loud as she turned the thought over in her mind.

"Yeah. Go on a date with him and it's all over," Sam assured her. "You'll have a dorky admirer following you for the rest of your life."

"It could work," agreed Carly with a steady nod and a growing smile. She turned to look at Sam and found the blond girl's eyes were again glued to the television screen. Good old Sam. "You know, you're being surprisingly helpful considering that this is Freddie we're talking about."

Sam responded with a large shrug and an, "Eh." This was the perfect situation. It would solve all of her problems neatly and finally. So where was the triumphant feeling? What was the dull pain in her chest?

Back on the television, the father and the son had resolved their current dispute. The looks on their faces, ones of resolved conflict and the relief that settles in afterwards was one that was not mirrored on the those of the girls that were watching the program. On Carly's face was a look of worried determination, revealing the careful planning that was going on behind her brown eyes. The blonde's face was much less telling, its slackened state not even hinting at the raging internal battle that continued to flare inside of her.

Only fourteen sentences spoken, and yet so many emotions evoked.

* * *

Because he was seated with his back to the door, Freddie didn't even look up from his computer station as the door to the computer lab opened and closed. It wasn't until the entrant had come within a few feet of him that his nose picked up a familiar scent. He immediately whirled around in his computer chair as he asked in a surprised, nearly cracking voice, "Carly?"

Carly smiled down at Freddie, not surprised in the least that he knew she was coming before he had even seen her. That was an ability that he had developed within a few months after meeting her. A glance at the screen behind him revealed a white screen littered with HTML coding. It was amusing to think that what looked like nonsensical scrawl to her looked like the iCarly homepage to Freddie. Eyes back on the teenage boy, she teased, "Working hard?"

"Most of the time," answered Freddie with a small smile of his own. "So what brings you to the computer lab?"

"Just wanted to talk," let out Carly casually as she placed her books on the long desk and stole the padded, swiveling chair from an adjacent computer station. While Carly adjusted herself into her new seat, Freddie took a quick survey of the room. He found that besides the two of them, the only other person in the room was Jeremy. The germ-riddled boy was purposefully looking the other way. Jeremy always gave Freddie space when it came to girls. Whether it was out of respect to him or fear of the girls was something that he was never really able to figure out or work up the courage to ask. His attention returned to Carly. She was dressed in a stark white t-shirt whose sky blue lettering was obscured by a black denim vest. A matching, layered skirt with white, cloth flares peeking out between the darkly dyed layers covered her legs from her waist to the tops of her knees. It was a standard outfit, and infinitely more complex and better looking than the patterned, green, button-up shirt and jeans that he had tossed on that morning. As his vision returned to the serene expression on Carly's face, he asked, "This is about last week, huh?"

"Pretty much," admitted Carly as she sank further into her chair's padding. She noticed how his eyes seemed to absorb her every movement. Warmed by the familiar feeling, she decided to cut straight to the chase. "So you like a new girl now, huh?" Freddie's eyes widened as a part of his life that he had tried to keep secret was thrust under the spotlight. Freddie's expression was enough of an answer for Carly. Fighting hard to keep a friendly smile on her face, she continued, "So who is she?"

A blush had overtaken Freddie's face. The blush was fueled from both the quality of the question and the content of his answer. After all, the only answer he could honestly give was, "I don't know."

"Huh?" Carly's face had smoothed out into a mask of confusion.

"I kind of ..." he trailed off, gathering strength for his embarrassing confession.

Carly's right eyebrow raised questioningly. "Kind of?"

Freddie took one more deep breath before finishing, "Met her online."

"Like on a dating website?" Carly asked, her head tilting to the right.

Freddie shook his head. "In a chatroom for fans of a show that I like."

The conversation took a pause while Carly looked at Freddie in disbelief and Freddie's eyes flickered around the room, focusing on anything that wasn't Carly. Carly finally broke the silence, asking with a sour look on her face, "How can you say you like someone if you don't even know what they look like?"

"You know there's more to liking someone than their looks," said Freddie defensively as the chair his back was pressed against began to feel like a wall.

"That may be true, but at our age, Freddie, looks count for a lot," declared Carly.

"Not for me,"stated Freddie resolutely.

Carly's right hand hooked her hair behind her right ear. The conversation was getting interesting. With a smirk on her face and a twinkle to her eye, she challenged, "Really?"

Freddie found himself leaning forward, driven by Carly's natural charisma; falling helplessly back into the state he had hoped he had sealed away forever. The wave of nostalgia flowing through him felt refreshing, like the warm, gentle ebbs of the Caribbean ocean. His memories of the past two months were instantly, temporarily forgotten. Smiling softly he spoke didactically, "Take yourself for instance."

"Taken," agreed Carly with a nearly identical smile on her lips.

"Sure, you're one of the most beautiful girls in the school, but for me that's only icing on the cake," confided Freddie, he hands moving animatedly. "What I really love about you ..." he interrupted himself with a cough before self-editing, "like about you is how great a person you are."

Carly began to look away as a blush graced her fair skin. Freddie's praise never used to affect her like this, but she hadn't heard it in so long that its efficacy had improved to the point where even this phrase that had been tainted by his correction brought a warm feeling to her heart.

Freddie continued, "You're the nicest girl I've ever met, Carly. You go out of your way to help people who would never ask for it. You'd do everything in your power to not hurt someone else."

"Alright Freddie! Stop! Geez," interrupted Carly this time, the heat on her face having intensified to an intolerable temperature.

Freddie's gaze was now affixed on Carly's face as he took in her blush in amazement. He could never remember a time when his words had had this effect on her, and he knew after a glance at her face that he would have remembered such a moment for the rest of his life. The flustered look that Carly had was stunningly cute. So much so that he almost didn't recognize her words as she asked, "So this person you met online is a great person too?"

Quickly smothering the flame of passion that was ready to burst through the growing crack in his carefully forged emotional armor, he took a moment to gather her thoughts before answering hesitantly, "Not really."

Carly's arms crossed snugly against her chest, the blush on her cheeks gradually disappearing. "What up, then?"

The boy found it was difficult to put into words what he felt with Pam, but he attempted it for Carly's sake. "It's like ... she knows me," he slowly piece together.

Carly's lips again formed into a smirk. "I know you, Freddie. Even Sam knows you."

Grinning ruefully at Carly, he returned, "It's more than that. I'm explaining this badly," he added, mainly to himself. "It's like she wants to know my every thought, as though she was feeding on them." Before Carly could interject, he continued, "Sometimes when we're discussing something, she knows what I think about a topic before I consciously realize it."

"So she's basically a psychic?" asked Carly as she began to imagine someone hanging to her every word for sustenance.

"It's not that silly, or simple," he said, shaking his head in a quick, small cycle. "She makes me feel like every thought I have is special. Like I matter." A frown touched both of the teenagers' lips at the appearance of that last sentence.

Carly leaned forward suddenly, placing her right hand on his left knee and shaking it lightly. Once his eyes found hers, she said seriously, "You matter to me, Freddie."

"I know, Carly," assured Freddie with a smile. "I know that I matter to you, to my mom, to Jeremy, maybe even to Sam." He finished the last one with a grin that Carly shared with him before he concluded, "She's the only one who makes me FEEL it though."

It was with those words and at that moment that Carly realized why she had felt so off during the past couple of months. What the new girl was to Freddie, Freddie had been to her. Over all of the years of their friendship he had been standing patiently by her side; lending her an ear, a shoulder, a smile; giving praise, advice, warnings. The big difference was that Carly had been ignorant of what a good thing she had going for her. Leave it to the smart kid to recognize what was going on around him. It was this recognition that was going to deliver him straight into the unknown arms of his online liaison. The feeling of regret that had been slowly building up inside of her ever since she had told him that she would never go out with him materialized in full force, taunting her with one of the worst mistakes she had ever made.

To the untrained eye, Carly's expression didn't appear as though it had changed at all. When it came to watching Carly, however, Freddie's eyes were blooded veterans. The teenage boy noticed both the stiffening of her upper body and the the sudden abandonment and forced reapplication of her smile. These were signals that an unpleasant thought had entered into her head. Eyebrows furrowing in concern, he asked, "Are you alright, Carly?"

Aware that her attempt to hide her emotion had been caught, she quickly reviewed her options and decided that the best course of action for her was to go on the offense. Sam would be so proud. "So what if she's ugly?"

Freddie's lips pursed. He knew that this was a dodge, but he didn't want to force Carly to share her feelings. Shrugging his shoulders, he returned, "Define ugly. Are we talking unattractive or repulsive?"

A bemused expression took residence on Carly's face. Obviously Freddie had thought this topic out thoroughly beforehand. "Either."

Freddie leaned back in his chair, his eyes focusing on the white, ceiling panels while he rattled off the results of his previous contemplation on the matter. "If she's unattractive there's really no issue. I'm not that good looking myself, so we'll probably match up well." Freddie's eyes were so focused on the ceiling that he didn't notice Carly's sudden doubting countenance. "And if she's repulsive, as much as I'd like to say otherwise, I think we'll just have to stay friends."

Carly nodded slowly. She hadn't expected him to be so rational about the whole thing. She had a passing thought about whether his obsession with her had been this thought out. "So I'm guessing she's our age, huh?"

Freddie nodded gravely, realizing where Carly was leading the conversation.

"What if she's lying?" she asked, creeping forward suddenly with a bending of her waist. "What if she's old? Or a guy?" She paused for a moment before ending with a theatrical widening of her eyes, "Or an old guy?"

Because Carly had been leaning forward throughout her interrogation, the two teens now found their faces mere inches apart, a fact not lost on either of the two considering the sudden rosiness of their complexions. Even if that distance was ten feet, however, it would have been clear to Carly that her questioning hadn't fazed Freddie at all. As if his calm expression was not enough, he spoke, "I've tested her knowledge of pop culture at odd moments, and she responds quickly enough for me to believe that she isn't looking it up online. Also, her typing style and way of thinking match up with yourself and Sam from what I can tell." A small smile formed on his lips before he finished, "So if she, or he, is tricking me, she, or he, is doing a great job of it."

Carly hopped back into her seat suddenly, crossing her arms as her back hit the padded chair. This conversation wasn't turning out the way she had planned it to. "How can this not bother you at all?" demanded Carly her face mirroring her bewilderment.

"It's not like I love her," said Freddie with surprising nonchalantness. As far as he was concerned, this was the honest truth. He had felt the consuming flames of love before; every time he caught a glimpse of the girl sitting before him. He wasn't going to pretend those flames weren't still there because they were, but their intensity had been dampened. Maybe because, "I'm interested in her. I have a crush," he added, attempting to hammer his feeling into a comprehendible shape. "It's the first time I've had one," a small break in the sentence occurred while Freddie swallowed down the incendiary phrase, "other than you." After grasping at straws for a moment, he finished, "in a long time."

For a moment, the only thing Carly could think of was that it took a special kind of person to recognize and then admit what Freddie had just said. Her mind quickly focused on the possibilities for the future. In her mind's eye she saw Freddie standing in a darkened room before five shadowy figures whose faces were covered by the grinning, Viennese masquerade masks which enjoyed a recent surge of popularity thanks to the movie V for Vendetta. The good scenarios played out for her all at once, and Freddie lifted the masks off of the first three figures to reveal respectively: a disheveled, aproned house wife, an effeminate male teenager dressed in a pink T-shirt buried in hearts, and Lewbert in all his mole-y glory. If either of these occurred, then Freddie would return to his previous state almost instantaneously.

The fourth figure's mask was removed then, showing a gorgeous, blonde, teenage girl smiling haughtily with a mouth full of evenly spaced, perfectly whitened teeth. For some reason, this image didn't worry Carly too much. Chances were that Freddie would have to struggle to maintain a relationship with a girl like that. The monetary and emotional costs would be high to keep her happy, keep up with her level of style, and keep the other boys away from her. The strain would eventually sour the relationship and Freddie would be back to almost normal, his romantic aspirations dulled for the moment by this failed attempt.

No, the real danger lay in this fifth figure, whose mask Freddie removed tentatively. Behind the disguise lay a normal looking, brown-haired girl whose brown eyes were covered by small, wire framed glasses. Those eyes, which were initially focused on the floor, eventually wandered up to look into Freddie's eyes, and the expression that lit up the girl's face caused a tightening in Carly's chest. This innocent lamb would devour Freddie whole, leaving nothing for anyone else. She would do everything in her power to keep him and all his thoughts and emotions to herself, including never straying from his side. And Freddie had the right temperament to not realize that he had been permanently ensnared.

From what Freddie had shared with Carly, this last one was the most probably outcome. Never again would she be able to send his heart racing with a simple smile. Never again would he bend over backwards just to hear her say that she was happy. Never again would she know with absolute certainty that the only other woman inside his heart was his mother.

Freddie's expression was the textbook example of puzzlement as he regarded the girl across from him. It was unlike Carly to go silent for long periods of time, let alone stare into the distance in a daze. Just as he was about to ask what was wrong, the glaze seemed to lift from her beautiful brown eyes. They quickly focused on his own, and he could swear that there was a sheer film of water adding a shimmering quality to those orbs.

"So where does she live?" Carly asked suddenly, attempting to maneuver the conversation.

"Somewhere in Seattle presumably," said Freddie half-heartedly, the other half focused on Carly's eyes.

"Seattle?" parroted Carly in surprise. "Why haven't you guys met yet?"

"It's not from lack of trying on my part," assured Freddie with a sigh. "Every time I've brought the subject up she either ignores it or runs away."

The chances of the fifth girl lessened slightly with this news, but Carly wasn't willing to risk Freddie's whistled, "You Are My Sunshine" on a roll of the dice. Shifting her tone to conversational, she chided, "You can't do anything with her. You can't even bring her to the movies."

Freddie grinned ruefully at his friend as he returned, "It's not like I have someone to take to the movies now."

This was the opening Carly had been working towards since the start of the conversation. Swallowing down the lump of fear and embarrassment that had accumulated in her throat, she told him, "You could take me to the movies sometime."

It took a handful of seconds for Freddie to recognize what Carly had agreed to, so by the time he had brought his astonished gaze to her face a lovely blush had taken up residence there. As he looked into her questioning eyes, the wall he had carefully built up over the past few weeks shattered as though it were made of thin ice. The old feelings that he had convinced himself that he put aside rushed out in sync with the almost painfully rapid beating of his heart.

* * *

As Freddie hurriedly asked the still blushing Carly out to the movies that Friday night, a light had gone on in the eyes of the boy who had been sitting silently on the other side of the room. An idea that had been slowly building inside of his consciousness had been reinforced by what he had just heard. Jeremy gazed down and found that his hands were shaking with an emotion that he could not discern at the moment. It all made sense now. His memories fit together like pieces in a puzzle. The beatdown against his locker. The appearance of a new, feisty girl in the chatroom. The slap upside the back of his head. The rapid, almost planned capture of Freddie's attention.

EngiFanatic was Sam.

* * *

Author's Notes: I think I've established a core set of readers by this point so ... I'm not holding back anything anymore. I like to tone down my verbosity in the first few chapters to ease newer readers into my writing style. What this means for the story is less action per words, but more insight as well. It's the way I like to read things, especially in a fic like this that is generally focused more on emotions than actions. Hope you guys brought your reading glasses.

I tried out some bastardized stream of consciousness in this chapter. I'm pretty sure you were able to tell by how botched up it is that I'm not too big a fan of that writing style. I thought it fit in with what I was trying to do at that point though. Please feel free to let me know if it didn't.

Oh, and the way it's going now, I have the outlines for two more chapters finished as of right now. I just wanted to inform the curious.

Once again, thanks for reading and see you next time!

Falling Further


	4. A prelude to?

"Something isn't right," thought Sam to herself as she walked through the school halls. She wasn't receiving the wide berth she normally enjoyed, which explained the the unfamiliar sensations of strangers' shoulders bumping against her own. The eeriness was accented by a chance hallway meeting with Gibby. Instead of avoiding her gaze, which was standard protocol when she wasn't accompanied by Carly or Freddie, his eyes met hers as he waved cheerfully at her.

Sam made a weak attempt to figure out when she had stopped making havoc her top priority during school hours, but knew deep inside that she had changed roughly two months ago. Her chats with Freddie seemed to have a latent therapeutic effect, eliminating her desire to crush lesser beings underneath her heels. As a direct result of this, Sam hadn't gotten into trouble in weeks. Her last detention had been months ago, and it appeared as though the student body had caught on. As she glared at yet another person who bumped into her, she began to wonder if she had really changed that drastically.

Her contemplation drew her attention away from the real world, and Sam soon collided at full force with a teacher. Moving solely by reflex, Sam grabbed the book that was falling from the teacher's grasp and handed it back to her. It was then that she noticed that the teacher she had bumped into had monitored her last detention, followed shortly afterwards by the discovery that the teacher had tears in her eyes.

"Hey, are you okay?" asked Sam, going back in her memory to make sure she hadn't barreled into the teacher too hard.

"I'm fine, Sam," assured the teacher with a wavering voice. "I'm just so happy for you!" The teacher ignored the bewildered look on the girl's face, patting the girl on the top of her head affectionately as she praised, "Keep up the great work, and have a nice day!"

As the teacher sauntered away dabbing at the corners of her eyes with her right pinky, a disgruntled look appeared on Sam's face. She didn't feel different on the inside, but the school had obviously lost a great deal of its respect for her "abilities". While she didn't really feel like engaging in her old activities, she missed the aura of fear that she used to generate so effortlessly as she walked down the hallways. There was really only one way to gain at least a fraction of it back, and so Sam decided that she would unload a couple of months worth of bullying onto the first easy target she saw.

Mere moments after making this decision, Sam felt more than noticed out of the corner of her eye that she was being followed. A sudden 90 degree turn to her right caused her stalker, Germy, to shrink back nervously for a moment. A feral grin appeared on Sam's lips, a smile similar in quality to the one a predatory cat reveals when it selects its prey. The targets never really got any easier than Germy, after all.

It felt like second nature to take slow, menacing steps towards the boy with the old, mischievous expression pulled onto her face like a painted mask. This was the result of extensive use of this opening gambit in the past; the clearest signal to her prey that she was coming after them that she had ever employed short of yelling, "I'm coming after you!" (She had actually yelled that at Freddie once after he drew attention to a pimple high on her right cheek. He had been standing next to her at the time, and his sudden, startled backpedaling had been wonderful.) As she continued her march, however, an overall feeling of wrongness pervaded her senses. Perhaps it was the determined look on his face, or the calm way in which he held his books at his side, balanced against his flank. Then again, it was probably because he wasn't running away screaming.

Warding the thoughts away with a near imperceptible shake of her head, Sam decided to ignore all of the warning signals. She felt somehow that she needed to remember the look of fear in a victim's eyes before it completed its seemingly rapid escape from her memory. Stopping a few feet in front of Germy, Sam shifted her weight backwards as her arms crossed against her chest. Her face was emotionless as she measured Germy from head to toe with her eyes and muttered loudly, as if to herself, "He's a little big, but he should fit into one of those B hall lockers with some effort."

Germy stood his ground, only sneezing once before declaring, "I know your secret, Sam."

Sam's lips took on an impervious smirk as she asked from underneath a dangerously raised eyebrow, "What could you possibly know?"

Germy began to move his head forward to whisper the secret in her ear. Sam was unwilling to risk the high probability of the boy sneezing on her face, however, so she began to lean backwards. The teenagers continued their awkward little dance until Sam was nearly bending over backwards and could feel Germy's strained breathing on her neck. With a shudder, Sam quickly corrected the situation.

Germy found himself pushed against a locker that had been five feet away from him seconds ago, having received a rapid, powerful shove from Sam. As his eyes found her again, he noticed that she was still standing in the same position she had stood moments before, but the smirk had disappeared. In its place was a narrow eyed glare: a wordless proclamation that he needed to spill about the secret, or she would spill his guts instead. Or rather the contents of said guts. Praying to the Powers That Be that he wouldn't sneeze, he took suspicious glances to his left and his right before loudly whispering (and thereby nullifying the effect of whispering in the first place), "You're EngiFanatic."

When faced with a sudden, disastrous situation, it is a normal human response to run away, so "technically" Sam reacted normally. Still, most people didn't run away dragging their problem behind them with a right fist clenched tightly around a shirt collar. The student body pointedly looked the other way while Sam played the familiar game of "human tow truck". While Sam had been docile over the past couple of months, the days of her high school terrorism were still fresh in their memories.

Germy had lost his balance twice by the time they arrived at their destination: an often overlooked storage closet. Each time he had almost fallen over, Sam had managed to hold him up even while holding him at arm's length. She was so very strong.

When Sam turned around to toss him into the musky closet, she was distressed to find that the boy's expression wasn't filled with fear. There was something she had never seen before on his face, maybe because he had never seemed to look into her eyes before. She didn't like this situation one bit. The mere mention of this closet used to send the boy into frightened fits of sneezes. Its moldy environment had the potential to force Germy into a series of sneezes that wouldn't end until his throat was raw and his diaphragm was spasming. And yet here he was, waiting for her move with a calm look on his face.

After opening the door with her free hand, Sam hurled Germy into the closet with such ferocity that he crashed into the supplies. The disturbed items crashed on the ground with a resonating cacophony. The catastrophic form of music and overall sense of chaos improved her mood, and she stepped into the closet with a smile on her face as she slammed the door behind her. The door closed, they stood in total darkness, the only sound being the boy's heavy breathing and occasional hand-muffled sneeze.

Within two breaths Sam had decided to act passively for once in her life. She didn't know why, but it appeared from his pitiful attempts at secrecy that he had come to her with the news before Freddie. If she came at him hard, like the last time she had grilled him for information, chances were that he would freeze up again. She would just have to pretend that the secret didn't mean much to her. She could always fall back to her original premise of the situation being a prank, after all. If she lessened the value of his bargaining chip, there was no reason she shouldn't be able to regain even footing with the other occupant of the closet.

Her plan of action worked out, Sam fished around the wall briefly before finding and flicking on the light switch. To Germy's credit, he only sneezed twice in surprise. Sam stood with most of her weight distributed to her left leg, her left hand resting in the palm of her right. Sam's gaze drifted lazily downwards as she began to methodically crack her knuckles. As Germy found his own eyes focusing on her active hands, he heard Sam ask with a poorly veiled tone of menace, "What do you want?"

That was a very good question. Up until that point, Jeremy really hadn't figured out what he wanted to do with the information. The logical thing to do would have been to share his epiphany with Freddie. It was a plan of action he had intended to follow until he listened further to Freddie and Carly planning their date. His back had been turned to his two friends, but he could distinctly hear the laughter, joy, and excitement seeping through their voices. Jeremy's memory of that event was tinted with an emotion the distinct shade of emerald green. He realized with a start that he was jealous. Jealous of his friend who he had learned that afternoon had both the beautiful Carly and the tsundere* Sam vying for his attention. Meanwhile the closest thing he had had to a romantic experience was Sam pinning him up against his locker. The memory of the heat coming off of her body brought a blush to his cheeks. His eyes widened as he came to a mental understanding of his physical reaction. His body had provided the answer to Sam's question. He wanted more memories like that.

Sam stood to Germy's side, eying the silent boy warily. He hadn't sneezed once since the lights had been turned on, so he was overdue for a big one. Sam was determined to not get caught in the spray. Her attempts to predict what he would ask for were not promising. He was a big guy. Maybe he wanted some of her lunch. Then again, perhaps he wanted her to stop bullying him from now on. Or maybe, she thought with a lurch of her stomach, he wanted her to cease her communication with Freddie.

She would have never guessed that the words that would eventually tumble out of Germy's mouth in a rapid jumble would be, "Go to the movies with me on Friday." Somehow he was able to hold the sneeze back until after he delivered his ultimatum. After the sneeze, he added as a pleading afterthought, "Please."

Her mind refused to wrap around the idea properly, forcing Sam to ask, "Huh?"

"It's just that I," Germy began and left the sentence hanging. His gaze fell to the ground, and his lower lip found itself being chewed by his teeth. How much could he tell her without sounding pitiful? A quick glance at her face showed that his thoughts were being wasted. It would be extremely difficult for her to see him any lower. Steeling his resolve, he finished, "I've never been on a date before."

Sam stood on the balls of her feet as she looked Germy up and down. As her eyes reached his face he sneezed. From somewhere high up above in the stratosphere her standards were screaming down at her that this would be an epic low. Still, just one date and her secret would be safe. The boy might be riddled with bacteria, but she knew that he was an honorable guy. If he said he would keep the secret from here onwards, she didn't doubt that he would. One horrific night in exchange for eternity. That didn't sound . that bad. Plus that was pretty sad, never having been on a date before. It would be like a charity case. Something she could put on her good karma resume next to, "I didn't trip Freddie that one time." She took a steadying breath before stating flatly, "You're paying for everything."

There was no facial response from Germy at first because he had been petrified by surprise. He had said they would go to a movie, but what movie? Should he ask her what she wants to see? No, that would be a sign of weakness. If his frequently wedgied rear had a pearl of wisdom, it was that Sam hated weakness. Ideas suddenly popped into his head as if from an outside source, like a direct beam from God. "We should go . see . The Night, AH CHOO, Jupiter Sat Down."

"Really?" checked Sam with the hint of a smile. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad. Freddie had been talking about that movie so frequently lately that she kind of wanted to see it.

Germy nodded twice before qualifying, "Todays . bloc . bloc . HAH KEE, blockbusters have, you know." There was a momentary pause while Germy searched his memory for the rest of what he wanted to say. When the words finally came to him, he finished, "something for . everyone?"

It didn't sound like Germy was speaking his own words. Knowing him, he had probably looked up what to say when asking a girl out on the Internet and memorized the example given. Shrugging her shoulders, she asked, "Do you know which movie theater?"

Again the answer came to him without his needing to look it up. Someone up above was definitely looking out for him. "The Strand is playing it downtown at 7:45 pm," he said quickly before he was overtaken by another sneeze. The dankness of the closet was brutal on his sinuses.

"That's that then," said Sam with the resignation of a doomed prisoner. Her eyes began to creep towards the door handle as she continued, "I'll meet you at the Strand at 7:40. Buy the tickets before I get there."

Germy's feelings of victory had boiled over by this point, but his fear of punishment kept him from cheering at the top of his lungs. Because Sam's eyes were averted, he allowed himself a strong fist pump with his left arm. The sudden movement agitated something that had been sitting dormant, either the dust in the air or some blockage in his nose. Whatever the case, the boy was forced, as usual, to let out a ferocious sneeze. Unfortunately for both of them, Sam had been looking forward to leaving the closet so much so that she had taken her attention off of the boy. And therefore, the right side of her face was hit by thick, slimy mixture of saliva and snot.

Germy's hands found their way to his mouth, clasping themselves over it in horror. Sam, who had remained perfectly still as she felt the wetness hit her cheek, began to physically shake with the rage bubbling forth from her core. With terrifying slowness she turned towards the boy; first legs, then torso, and finally her face. Her head was tilted slightly to the right, covered only partially by long strands of blond hair. The rage stayed off of her face, instead pooling in her eyes. It appeared as though there was fire seeping through her irises.

The boy's mouth opened in silent horror as his moment of victory was transfigured into one of fear and pain.

* * *

When Jeremy regained consciousness, he found himself in total darkness, buried underneath the previous contents of the shelves around him. The objects weren't too heavy, so with a little wiggling he had given himself enough clearance to stand up and dust himself off. After gingerly feeling around his body to make sure that she hadn't seriously injured any part of his body, he allowed himself another triumphant fist pump. The movement again agitated the dust around him, setting off a series of sneezes.

Even though his lungs burned slightly, he was feeling good. He actually had a date for Friday night. How many nerds could say that? Nodding to himself in congratulations he cautiously moved in a random direction, hoping to run into either the door or the light switch. His first instinct was a good one, and his outstretched right hand found the door handle. Unfortunately when he tried to turn the handle he discovered that Sam had barricaded the doorway.

Sam, who had been resting her back against a locker a stone's throw away from the closet, heard Germy's initial cry of despair. The noise should have brought a smile to her lips, but it couldn't overpower the conflicting emotions swirling within her. She couldn't quite decide how she was feeling because all of the aforementioned emotions were present and screaming for attention at the same time. There was a tempest of rage at being played out by the idiot she had just trapped in a closet. A gust of relief blew through her at the maintained integrity of her secret. Then a flash of disgust appeared for caring enough about the secret to agree to this germy deed. And finally, that ever-present, all encompassing storm of dread at discovering why she just couldn't bring herself to stop her late night meetings with Freddie.

* * *

After a quick consultation of her daily planner, Carly grabbed her Algebra, Biology, and English textbooks out of her locker. It looked like it would be another fun-filled evening of homework. Yay school. Well, at least while she was working on her homework she would be able to get her mind off of what was plaguing her at the moment.

It had been hours since Freddie had clumsily asked her to the movies and she had shyly acquiesced, but Carly was still confused about how she felt about the upcoming date. She was missing some of those feelings that she normally associated with first dates, such as the anticipation of learning more about her date through the course of the evening. She already knew Freddie better than she knew most of her family members. What would they have to talk about if about each other was a boring option? It wasn't all bad, though. There wasn't any of that anxiety that she had grown accustomed to, either. There was no need for Carly to worry about what she would wear. Freddie had once convincingly assured her that she looked beautiful after an unfortunate spill into a mud patch. She had spent the rest of that particular excursion dirty yet unconcerned. Freddie was kind of like a cheerleader for her.

That thought brought up a particularly bad mental image of Freddie dressed in a red and white skirted cheerleader's uniform, enthusiastically hopping up and down and waving his color coordinated pom poms high up in the air. After suffering through the image for a moment, she corrected his role to moral support. Heaven knew that her other best friend didn't provide too much of that. And speaking of the devil, there was Sam walking down the hallway with a distracted expression on her face.

Carly skipped over to Sam, shifting her books into the crook of her left arm as she did so. Arriving within arm's reach of her friend, Carly Sam's left shoulder with her freed right hand empathetically as she asked, "You alright there, Sam?"

Sam blinked rapidly at her best friend, as though waking up from a particularly engrossing dream. In a way she was, having only then emerged from the vortex-like conflict within herself. Sam instinctively went into defensive mode, deciding under no circumstances to let Carly know about her "date" with Germy. Like many of her thoughts nowadays it was a toss-up whether this was to preserve her secret or to save herself from the embarrassment of her predicament. Face neutral, she said in short tones, "I'm fine. How about you?"

Carly gave her friend an amused look in response to her unnatural attitude. Shrugging it off as Sam being Sam, Carly leaned in closer to her friend before saying with a twinkle in her eye, "I'm going to the movies with Freddie on Friday around 7:30."

Sam's internal conflict was abated as a sharp pain rose within her chest. Face remaining neutral, she said as uncaringly as she could manage, "That was quick, making him forget about that other girl." There was a righteous spark growing within her that was directed towards Freddie. Eager to forget about her pain, she began to focus on the spark, attempting to nurture it into a flame.

"It wasn't really that simple," said Carly matter-of-factly. "I actually had to work on him a bit." Carly had been looking down at her books in embarrassment, so she didn't catch the flash of hope that flew across Sam's face. The look quickly died away as Carly let out, "I had one major advantage over her, though. Freddie knew what I looked like."

In the past, Freddie had always made it so effortlessly easy for her to be angry at him. It looked like he was back to his old tricks. The spark grew as she imagined the boy acting like all the other boys in school: a pig. "So you won because you're gorgeous, huh?" said Sam with a smirk that came easily to her face.

A gracious blush appeared on Carly, and the brunette teenage girl continued to stare down at her textbooks. "Not really. He said he would have been fine if she was normal looking." She missed the sudden disappearance of Sam's smirk, although she noticed it's absence when she shifted her eyes upwards from her downcast position and added with a devious smirk of her own, "I just planted the seed of doubt about whether she was a girl or not."

"Oh," said Sam, her tone struck lifeless by a sudden feeling of unsatisfaction. She had been defeated by her anonymity, something she didn't have any control over. Maybe if the terms were more even she could have stood a chance. But she didn't want to stand a chance. Or at least she didn't think she wanted to in her current mood/position. She knew deep down that she would feel differently when she was alone in her bedroom, with her archaic computer sitting mockingly off in the dining room. Not wanting to hear anything further, but aware that silence would seem suspicious, Sam asked conversationally, "Where are you guys going?"

"We're going to see "The Night Jupiter Sat Down"," answered Carly easily, her normal confident posture and mannerisms regained.

Upon hearing the title, Sam experienced a nagging feeling at the edge of her consciousness, like a car horn heard through a closed wooden door. The blond girl quickly pushed the thought aside as a more pressing one popped into her head. "I thought you guys were going to see a chick flick," stated Sam, her eyes narrowing suspiciously.

Carly dodged the suspicion with a smile. "Freddie actually suggested "Fatcat Bajillionaire", but I said I wanted to see something he wanted to see." She shifted her books into her other arm before adding, "I told him that nowadays all of the blockbusters had something for everyone, anyway."

Sam knew she had heard that exact same sentence earlier that day, just not told as naturally. Her mind quickly put the pieces together, matching words with faces then shifting to how the events must have played out. Germy was probably spewing off stuff he had heard before, which meant that he had been eavesdropping on Carly and Freddie earlier. He must have figured out her secret sometime during that conversation. Sam then realized where that nagging feeling had come from earlier. Her "date" with Germy shared similar characteristics with Freddie and Carly's date. As a matter of fact, as far as she knew, they were identical to each other up until that point. Sighing inwardly, Sam attempted to maintain a normal tone of voice as she asked, "Hey, Carly. What movie theater are you guys going to?"

"The Strand," said Carly, who quickly found herself looking at the back of her friend's head. Immediately after those words left her mouth, Sam's face turned as if to look down the hallway. Furrowing her eyebrow, Carly took a look of her own down the hallway as she explained, "I know it's a little bit out of the way, but it was the only one playing the movie at the time we wanted."

Sam had averted her face so that Carly couldn't see the rage that had fixed her face into a primal snarl. What an idiot! She should have known this wasn't his own original idea. Germy's particular brand of bonehead didn't have the ability to make their own decisions. She wouldn't be surprised if he intended to spy on Freddie for hints on how to act during the movie. Wait. Spy on Freddie? ...

"Hey, Sam. Are you okay?" asked Carly as she turned her attention back on her best friend. The brunette girl's attempt to find something interesting down the hallway had been fruitless.

The face that Sam eventually showed to Carly was a smiling one. "Everything's great, Carls," she said convincingly, patting her friend on her right upper arm. "Hey, I gotta go take care of something." Without another word Sam spun around and sprinted down the hallway.

Carly contemplated yelling after her to stay out of trouble, but decided that it would be a waste of breath. Sam would be Sam.

* * *

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Germy had known he hadn't seen the last of Sam for that day. He had hoped, however, that it would be under gentler circumstances.

Sam hooked her right leg behind the large boy's legs and gave him a stiff push with her corresponding arm, sending him sprawling backwards onto the hallway floor along with his dashed hopes. Sam stood over him with her feet together, palms resting on her hips as she bent forward slightly at the waist. The look on her face as she stood over him was an unamused one. He allowed himself one more sneeze, which she expertly dodged, before remaining perfectly still and praying that she would yell at him rather than devour him entirely.

The words that left her mouth were not amplified in volume, but were laced with biting ridicule. "You realize that you set up a date identical to the one that Freddie and Carly are going on?"

After quickly searching his memory, Germy nodded with trepidation. Those flashes of inspiration he had assumed were sent from heaven had actually come from somewhere much lower. Well, not that much lower. It turned out he had been repeating the details of the conversation he had been eavesdropping on.

Sam's head tilted to the right, stirring a fresh memory in Germy's mind of the beating he had received minutes beforehand. "What did you think was going to happen?" she demanded, the insistence of her words accelerating. "We were going to meet up with Carly and Freddie at the Strand and turn the whole thing into a double date?"

Germy's eyes widened as he wrapped his mind around the idea. "That would be great!" he exclaimed. He could keep his eye on Freddie for tips on how to act during the movie. Plus, it would start to feel more like a date and less like his plan to blackmail Sam had fatally backfired on him. It wasn't until he looked up into her unsmiling face that he realized she was speaking sarcastically. Gulping down the the sneeze that was hanging on the tip of his nose, he asked tentatively, "So do you want to change the date of the . uh . date?"

"Oh, we'll go," said Sam. She allowed the boy to breath a sigh of relief before she added, "In disguise."

Being sure to re-avert his eyes, he asked, "Can't we just change the day?"

With a twitch of her lips that echoed faintly of a smirk, she firmly stated, "No." Sam quickly turned on her heel and walked away, allowing her word to hang menacingly in the air over the downed teen.

Germy continued to look on the ground even after Sam had disappeared down the hallway, trying to find his scattered thoughts. He had been studying a website that told him how to dress for a date, and had been slowly amassing suitable clothing for the occasion. Just in case. There wasn't a section on the website about disguises though. Wait a second. Disguise was synonymous with costume, right?

* * *

The clock hanging from the nearby, neutrally orange, wallpapered wall proclaimed that it was 11:00 pm, so Sam was where she always was at around that time: in a private chatroom with TheTechPro. It had been business as usual so far, and Sam found herself infinitely more relaxed than she had been when she signed on. Maybe Freddie going out with Carly wasn't going to affect their late night chats. Lingering in the background, however, was a stubborn feeling of annoyance with herself for being relieved that her plan to end the chat sessions had again failed.

Just as she was beginning to tuck that feeling away for another day, Freddie typed, "I'm going out on Friday with someone that I guess you could call the girl of my dreams."

"is that so?" typed Sam with a wan smile. Her plan had worked.

"Yeah, she's this amazing girl," he began. "One of the most beautiful on this planet. Fun to be around. Nice to everyone."

Sam shook her head. Was he trying to gloat? "that's gr8 for you."

"It is. I should be spending every second of the day jumping up and down in anticipation."

"Well then why aren't you?" muttered Sam to the computer screen, her face molded into a sour position.

Before she could think of something to type, the following text appeared on her screen, "I would be two months ago. But that was before this started."

"what started?" typed Sam, saying it aloud as she did so.

"You're going to make me type it out, huh?" She could almost see his smile. "Before I met you, Pam."

Inexplicably, Sam's heart began to beat painfully. After attempting to get the organ back into line with a couple of deep breaths, she asked, "so what're you trying to say?"

The text came in fast spurts. "Sometimes, when I used to chase after this girl, I would console myself by thinking, 'She's too good for me anyway.' Now, every time I think about this upcoming date that's one of the first thoughts to pop into my head."

"im sure u two look good 2gether," typed Sam. She seriously meant those words. Freddie had finally achieved a non-embarrassing height, and they were two honest-looking people. They kind of matched. Better than she did with him, she added in defiance of a sudden mental image of herself standing next to him.

"You don't understand how gorgeous she is. But that's besides the point I'm trying to make here. One of the other thoughts that I've been having is that I wish I could go to the movies with you."

After reading those words, Sam almost choked on her saliva. After pounding her chest a couple of times and regaining her composure, she asked, "you mean in place of this girl of your dreams?"

There was a long pause before Freddie answered, as though he were giving the matter some serious thought. Sam's eyes remained glued to the screen until she read, "I think so, actually."

"how can you say that?" she questioned, her face mirroring her disbelief. "we've never even met!"

"Not face-to-face, but what would you call these chats?"

"chats," deadpanned Sam with a small smirk on her face.

"Heh. Kinda walked into that one. Still, they're meetings too. I feel like we know each other pretty well."

"this isn't how we'd act irl."

"Even better," he returned. "We know each other the way we would act without the defensive barriers people normally put up."

Sam sighed at his dorkishness before challenging, "what are you babbling about now?"

"They say people hold less back when communicating over the Internet because of the anonymity if gives us. We're less afraid of being rejected. It explains gamer rage, and the success of dating websites. So basically, I'd bet that we know each other better than most of our friends know us."

If he only knew, thought Sam. Grinning at the private joke only she was allowed to know, she typed, "you're an idiot."

"Yeah. I still want to meet you though."

There it was. He'd snuck it in there pretty neatly this time. Feeling feisty, she answered his request this time with, "why? so you can compare me to your dream girl?"

He threw her off balance by answering, "Maybe so I can have a new one."

Blushing deeply, Sam's fingers punished the keyboard as she aggressively typed, "act your intelligence!"

"And how do you suggest I do that?"

Sam groaned as a multitude of thoughts popped into her head. She picked out a few of the more pressing ones and typed, "enjoy your date with carly. fall in love with her. quit worrying about me."

Almost lightning quick, as though he had typed the sentence before she had thought of hers, Freddie typed, "I know I should, but I can't quite yet. Not while you're here, Pam."

"you're such a dork. watch me go." she typed before quickly going through the fluidly practiced motion of disconnecting from the chatroom. She sat in front of the disconnected mIRC screen for a few minutes, hugging her body to herself as her thoughts continued to swirl tempestuously.

Did they really know each other better through the course of these conversations? Sure, she could read Freddie's thoughts from his actions as a result of them, but there was no way he could return the favor, was there? Who was this person that Freddie knew?

Was she the one who was causing her heart to ache?

* * *

"EngiFanatic has left the chatroom," his computer announced to him in plain, black, courier new script. Freddie leaned back into his chair, crossing his hands behind his head. He didn't need to check the room roster to know that Pam had signed off entirely.

"Thwarted again," he announced to his darkened room. The only light being given off was from his computer screen, and the face it illuminated was a thoughtful one.

After a handful of deep, mind clearing breaths, Freddie went back to the chat window to see if there was anything he could have said differently. His search was fruitless. Everything looked good. He was being aggressive, but not forceful. His words contained enough charm to prevent him from sounding angry or frustrated. This girl just seemed to exist in a whole other dimension of shyness. Either that or she was hiding something.

Freddie quickly pushed that thought aside, and was ready to close the chat window when he noticed something awry.

The puzzlement quick spread throughout his mind. While his head tilted and his eyebrow furrowed at the screen, his thoughts raced down countless avenues; checking memories, concocting theories. Locked in a state of confusion, he only managed to utter one more thing to the darkness.

"Have I ever told her Carly's name?"

* * *

Author's Notes: There was a word used in this chapter that I doubt a lot of you would know. Tsundere is a Japanese term for a love interest who acts cold on the outside but actually likes someone. It's a pretty popular character type in Japanese anime and manga. I know there's no basis on the show for Germy being an otaku, but I know my own people. My otaku-dar is pretty effective.

I apologize for how long it took for this chapter to come out. It's been fully written in three different notebooks for at least a week now, but I've been too busy/lazy to type it out (More of the latter than the former, but don't tell anyone). Hopefully its size will appease some of you. I would like to think its pretty hefty.

This is more of a set-up chapter than anything else, but that means that next time you guys can look forward to one of my dual-view chapters. I swear I'm not aiming for these things as I write these fan fics, but they always seem to pop up. This one will be weird for me since they're going to be happening in the same location, though. Oh, well, we'll see.

Again, thanks for reading this far into the story. Unless you're a speed reader, you've logged in some time to get to this point. I appreciate you spending it dreaming with me.

See you next time!

Falling Further


	5. Date night

"I'm kind of starting to feel nervous," Carly admitted into her cell phone as she checked her reflection in her body-length, bedroom mirror. Her hair was let down naturally, the brown locks falling straight down from the roots of her hair into curly rings. She was wearing a deep violet t-shirt that proclaimed "a la mode" in fading, gray letters over a long-sleeved, cerulean blue t-shirt. Her dark wash skinny jeans hugged her legs in a fashion fitting to their name. Her feet were nestled in a comfortable pair of white sneakers with dark blue highlights. It was a simple outfit, but she thought she pulled it off rather nicely.

From the cell phone, Carly heard Sam ask through the sound of a blasting television set, "What's there to feel nervous about? It's Freddie."

"Yeah, I know," let out Carly. Her eyes drifted to a stuffed animal that Freddie had triumphantly given to her after blowing through ten dollars at a carnival game. As she reached out to shake the grinning bear's hand with a nostalgic smile of her own, Carly said thoughtfully, "That's most of the problem."

"So how did Spencer take the news? I bet he freaked out," predicted Sam with an excited rise of her voice.

Carly shook her head reflexively as she released the bear's hand. "I'm not going to let him know until right before we leave." A half smile on her face, she explained, "I didn't want to have to deal with him hovering over me with questions."

After a slight pause, Sam asked, "Aren't you supposed to leave like … nowish?"

The brunette girl's eyebrows furrowed as she looked towards her nearby alarm clock. It proclaimed in its unforgiving, green, digital digits that it was 6:58 pm. Freddie was due at her front door any second now. "Oh man! Sorry, Sam gotta go."

"No problem Carls. See you th … later."

Carly quickly shut her cell phone off and somehow stuffed it into her already full, tiny, white hand purse. She then took one more quick look in the mirror, her right hand reaching up to comb its fingers through her hair, before rushing out of her bedroom to find Spencer.

* * *

Freddie had more experience knocking on the door in front of him than any other door he could think of, but that couldn't prevent his heart from racing as his knuckles rapped against it weakly. He worried for a moment that he hadn't announced his presence properly until he heard the sound of footsteps racing towards the doorway. Just when it sounded like the people in the other room were close enough to open the portal, a loud thump resonated through the thick wood.

The sudden noise caused the boy to jump back in surprise. Sounds of struggle were easily recognizable even from Freddie's new position. After a few seconds of attempting to wait out the boisterous noise, Freddie inched closer to the door intending to take a reverse-peep through the door peephole. Just as he was about to place his left eye against the small, round button of glass, however, the door opened a sliver to reveal the flushing face of Spencer.

Spencer's face displayed a wide grin that he dropped only long enough to ask, "So you've captured the Holy Grail, huh Sir Freddie?"

Instantly recognizing the congratulatory nature of Spencer's question, the boy gave a sheepish grin as he looked towards the ground and embarrassedly answered, "I guess so."

"I always though ..." Spencer's thought remained unfinished as a slender, well-manicured hand reached from behind him to clamp down on his mouth. Freddie witnessed the guardian's eyes widen in surprise before he was thrown backwards. The door moved as though to follow Spencer on his trip downwards, revealing an equally flustered Carly standing triumphantly over the backwardly tripped Spencer. Once Freddie's gaze met Carly's, the brunette quickly commanded, "Run."

Spencer flailed helplessly on the ground as he called out, "But I just wanna talk!"

The two teens barely heard the young adult's cry, both being a considerable distance down the hallway. More background music was added to their escape when they heard Ms. Benson belt out, "What is the commotion around here?"

"Run faster!" commanded Freddie between quickening breaths. Almost immediately after Freddie's command, a shrill shriek of triumph trumpeted down the hallways, announcing Ms. Benson's entry into the foot race.

As Carly and Freddie raced down the stairway they managed to exchange basic greetings. On the fifth floor, Freddie gasped out, "You look great, Carly."

Carly spared him the briefest of smiles before returning her attention to the stairs flying beneath her feet. By the fourth floor, she had returned, "You don't look too shabby yourself there, Freddie."

The male teenager sent a beam of pride at Carly that lasted a little too long, causing the boy to stumble on the stairs. He managed to maintain his balance by grabbing onto the nearby railing, but Carly noticed the fumble and couldn't prevent herself from letting loose peals of mellifluous laughter. The sweet tones brought a warm feeling to Freddie's heart, and he thought for a moment that he would happily throw himself down the rest of the stairs for a chance to hear it again. Not that he did though. This is Freddie we're talking about.

There were guests in the lobby, so the pair had to separate and scatter through the assorted people. Even from across the room, however, they stuck their tongues out at Lewbert in perfect synchronization after he screeched from the front desk, "No running in my lobby!"

Even as the early evening air encircled their youthful bodies, there remained an unspoken agreement between the two shared via quick glances to not stop running for a couple more blocks. When they finally did stop moving their legs, the two teenagers caught their breath against the wall of a neighboring apartment building. After they had each regained the ability to breath without gasping, they shared conspiratorial grins.

Carly spoke first, explaining, "I didn't let Spencer know about our date until you knocked on the door." She took two more glorious inhalations of sweet, sweet oxygen before observing, "He reacted about as enthusiastically as I expected him to."

"You're braver than me," admitted Freddie as his back slid down the wall he had propped himself against. Their grand escape had been the most he had physically exerted himself in months. Trying not to worry about the sweat that he could feel gathering on his forehead, he confided, "I didn't mention anything to my mom. I was afraid she would start ordering wedding invitations."

Carly grinned down at her impromptu running partner, tossing him a shrug of her left shoulder as she flippantly asked, "Who knows? Maybe she's ordering them right now."

The seated teenager barely heard her words. There was a thin film of sweat on Carly's forehead which was glowing with a peculiar combination of the dying sun and waking streetlights. Carly's smile was framed by her hair, which cascaded down in brunette ringlets. As Freddie took in the whole, glorious image, he knew with sickening certainty that he had misspoken before when he called Carly one of the most beautiful girls in the school. She had to be the most beautiful girl on the planet.

As Carly had been looking down at Freddie, his face had gone from grinning to slackened. Concern lighting her face, she asked, "Are you okay, Freddie?"

A smile found its way back onto his face at the sound of his name coming from her lips. "I'd forgotten how beautiful you are."

If any other man had said those words, Carly would have been crippled by embarrassment. This was Freddie however, and hearing those things coming from his mouth felt entirely natural. That's why only a small blush graced her cheeks as she offered him her hand to help him to his feet. "We should get going," she said softly. "We're going to miss those previews you like so much."

As Freddie accepted her offer of help, he realized how similar they must look to his computer desktop image. Who said television didn't mirror real life?

* * *

Sam scrunched her face at the television. There was no way he could do that in real life, thought Sam as Chuck Norris leapt from the passenger compartment of a hot air balloon onto the top of a balloon that was flying below him. She pressed the green power button on her remote control, sending the image into a vanishing flicker. Sam remained seated for a moment, looking up at the blank screen in desolation. It was time to go.

After a short roll backwards, Sam used her resulting forward momentum to vault herself off of her bedroom floor. Some quick steps to her right placed her in front of her vanity mirror, where she began the painful process of rolling her hair into a bun. The process wasn't physically painful per se, but Sam was a novice in the art of messing with her hair. She preferred less troublesome methods like ponytails and quickly running a brush through her hair a couple of times. After the third failed attempt, Sam held a thick lock of her hair in front of her eyes, glaring at it as though she could make it behave through domination. Carly probably had no trouble with her hair. Like the rest of her, Carly's hair always looked so effortlessly perfect. A stray thought crossed her mind as her eyes passed over her own gleaming, blond strands. Which type of hair did Freddie prefer? Sure, Carly was brunette, but he would have been in love with her if she were bald. What if he found out that Pam was blond?

Sam shook off the thoughts and used her frustration with herself to force her hair into a messy but functional bun. She gave her mirror image a nod of congratulations before turning to her closet and throwing together the rest of her disguise. The first item, and probably the most important, was a dark blue baseball cap attached to a realistic wig of shoulder-length, straight, brown hair. After a quick survey of the clothing hanging in the closet, she grabbed a plain white t-shirt and a normal set of denim jeans. She knew from having checked earlier that there was a navy blue, hooded sweater waiting for her at the closet by the front door. Some quick rifling through her desk's drawers revealed the final part of her outfit, a pair of wire-framed sunglasses. After shrugging out of her school clothes and tossing on her disguise, she checked herself out in the mirror. The result was satisfactory, and she gave herself another congratulatory nod as she went to see what time it was.

After consulting her wall clock, she figured that if she hustled she could make it there in time. But hustling was extra work, and the girl placated herself with the thought that there were always previews. As she picked up her remote control and aimed it at the television she realized that if the room's lights were dimmed, it would be next to impossible to find Freddie and Carly without sneaking from couple to couple to take a close look at their faces.

Sam's mom almost didn't recognize the brunette blur also known as her daughter as she zoomed out of the apartment. The only answer she received from a hastily asked, "Where are you going?" was a shouted, "Out!" followed by a slamming of the closet and then the front door.

The mother took one good look at the closed front door from her seated position on the living room sofa. Her daughter must be maturing. Normally Sam would have wheeled around on her and demanded what right she had to ask that question. Her little girl was learning to pick her battles. She was growing up.

She frowned at the television at the implications of that statement. She was probably going to have to buy her a box of condoms and talk to her about the dangers of relationships and how to get everything she needed from men. That was going to be awkward. On the plus side, she could soon start charging her for rent. A smile formed on her face as she imagined holding out her hand to her daughter expectantly.

* * *

"That will be 20 dollars," announced the bored looking theater attendant through the glass window.

Freddie paid no attention to his allowance as it was slipped into the metal basin that connected him to the room behind the window. He would have gladly paid quadruple the price to be in his current position. The attendant slipped the tickets into the basin after quickly counting the bills. Tickets in hand, Freddie turned to face Carly with the indomitable grin he was unable to keep off of his face.

They had arrived at the movie theater 15 minutes earlier and had spent the entirety of that time in the massive Friday night movie line. The wait hadn't been bad at all, though. The two teens had been observing their fellow movie goers and were rewarded with a very colorful cast of characters. There were members of the Scene community done up in bright, flashy clothing loudly plagiarizing comments and reviews they had read on websites hours before. Glaring disapprovingly at their antics was a bunch of teenagers who looked as though they had gone their entire lives without stepping into direct sunlight, their underfed bodies wrapped tightly in dark, spiked, and often flaring clothing. A handful of teens that Freddie would normally associate with stood quietly in line, their spectacled eyes looking anxiously at the movie times as they worried over whether or not they would make it in time for the previews. There was even a kid dressed in costume for one of the newer horror movies, his hockey mask gleaming under the lobby's impressive lighting.

Carly and Freddie got a closer look at the costumed teenager as they made their way to the concession stand. After they had passed out of earshot, Carly turned to Freddie and said, "It looked like he was waiting for someone."

Freddie nodded in agreement before pondering out loud, "I wonder if they're going to come in costume, too."

"I bet they are," said Carly with conversational conviction. "If they do, do you think they'll come as a victim or another monster?"

Shrugging his shoulders, Freddie countered with a smirk, "Why can't it be both?"

Their conversation was interrupted by a short, blond girl who smilingly asked, "What can I get for you two?"

Freddie froze up in response to the simple question. He hadn't thought this little detail out. There was no question of whether he would be paying or not, but he didn't know if Carly was willing to share refreshments with him. He turned a questioning gaze in her direction and found her bent over the counter, looking at the candy it displayed through illuminated glass.

As he struggled for a suitable way to ask Carly about their situation, Carly straightened up, looked straight at the theater worker and said, "We'll have a medium order of popcorn, no butter, one large diet coke, and a box of gummy bears, please." As the worker gathered the items together, Carly raised an eyebrow in Freddie's direction to make sure the order was okay. The relieved smile she found on his face served as a wordless confirmation.

Carly took hold of the popcorn and gummy bears and Freddie paid the worker, leaving him with drink duty. As he moved to catch up with the girl that was already moving towards their movie room and sneaking in kernels of popcorn, he thought for a moment that this was turning out to be a perfect date. It was a scene out of his dreams. So why was he taking stock of everything Carly did and analyzing how Pam would react in her place. She had been so right. He was an idiot.

He was awoken from his thoughts as Carly looked at him expectantly, giving him the chance to choose where they were going to sit. The boy's eyes scanned the entire room.

* * *

Sam took one more look around the room, visualizing the lobby as it would be an hour from now. Yellow tape would cover the area, running from ceiling to carpet and back again as they intertwined with an intricacy befitting a spider's web. Police officers would be diverting sickened onlookers away from the walls which were tainted with a sticky, crimson color. The new guy on the force would be on his hands and knees as his lunch came up in sudden bursts. Meanwhile, the hardened veteran would stand over him, shaking his head at the wall in disgusted amazement. "In 30 years on the force, I've never seen anything like this," he would mutter repeatedly to anyone that would listen to him. And it would be appropriate dialogue, because once Sam got her hands on Germy, she was going to murder him in a violent, gruesome manner befitting a movie theater.

The girl had checked the room over three times, hoping that the hockey mask wasn't hiding Germy's face behind it. In the end, she had to face the facts. Germy was nowhere to be seen, and the lessen that disobeying Sam's orders was something akin to a suicide declaration had been thoroughly beaten into him. The shape of the costumed kid was right, too: big and doughy wherever applicable, and his head was whipping around from person to person like an automatic sprinkler. It had to be Germy hiding behind that mask.

Sam followed a crowd of kids as she approached the costumed teen's position, ensuring that the numskull wouldn't notice her and call out her name across the room. Once she was within arm's reach of him, she leapt out and grabbed the back of his flannel long-sleeved shirt in her fist and repositioned him behind a life-sized, cardboard cut-out of a smiling superhero using a not-so-delicate mixture of tugging, leading, and shoving.

It was the strength that alerted Germy who was assaulting him. After all, it was difficult to see someone who was pulling you from behind. As Sam finally deposited him on the ground, he whispered cautiously, "Sam?"

Sam rolled her eyes, an action that went unappreciated thanks to her sunglasses. "Brilliant deduction, there." Her head tilted to the side mockingly as she asked, "Do you have a lot of girls randomly grabbing you?"

"Not really," answered Germy truthfully. The sardonic nature of her question unrecognized, she had just taken a breath to begin chastising him when he sincerely exclaimed, "That's a great disguise!"

The girl spared him the briefest of smiles for his complement. "Yeah, thanks," she monotoned. "You do know you're wearing a costume, right?"

Germy nodded. "Yeah, I know. It's great, right?"

It was a standard slasher uniform: a long-sleeved, flannel shirt worn over dirt-stained, blue jeans crowned with a hockey mask held onto his face by a single elastic band. As Sam scrunched up her nose at what she hoped were artificial dirt stains, she asked skeptically, "What's so great about it?"

His head moved forward conspiratorially as he whispered, "When I wear a nose covering mask like this, I don't really sneeze!"

Sam blinked in surprise. She hadn't even thought about the fact that he would be sneezing through half of the movie. Something had felt wrong this entire conversation, but Sam had just attributed it to the fake dirt. It was true, Germy hadn't sneezed once since she saw him. His idiocy would actually work out in her favor. She allowed a mirthless smile to touch her lips as she said, "Congratulations."

Germy pulled back in confusion. "For what?"

"I'm not going to murder you in cold blood," she said with a straight face. As she walked by him on the way to the movie usher, she patted his left shoulder in congratulations.

As Germy began to pick himself up off of the ground, he let out a cautious, "Yay?"

Hearing the half-fearful, half-relieved timbre of his voice, Sam shook her head. It just wasn't as fun when her victim wasn't Freddie. As her thoughts began to focus on the mentioned boy, Sam had to make a conscious effort to keep her mind blank.

Germy took a few quick steps to hand the usher the movie tickets. The usher looked from the tickets to his costume and back again when he found out the guy who came in costume wasn't going to watch the new horror film. As he handed the ticket stubs back to Germy, he quietly asked with a grin, "She didn't want to see a scary movie, huh?"

After a quick look to find that Sam's attention was being drawn by an upcoming movie poster, Germy answered, "I'm trying to avoid a horror ending, really."

"What was that?" asked Sam, who had suddenly materialized next to him.

Germy didn't trust his voice to not crack when he answered negatively, so he indicated the movie suite with a nervous wave of his right arm. As Sam shrugged and began walking towards the room he breathed a sigh of relief. One ending avoided.

The lights were still up when the two teens entered the room, so it was not difficult for Sam to find her two friends seated in close to the middle of the upper tier of seats. She picked out a seat a little above them and began walking towards them. Germy followed her from a safe distance.

* * *

Out of the corner of her eye, Carly noticed the costumed kid entering the theater accompanied by a girl in a blue baseball cap. After briefly wondering why the costume-wearer wasn't going to see the slasher flick, Carly was struck by a sense of familiarity with the kid's date. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, though.

"Looks like it's a victim," said Freddie, his gaze in the same direction as Carly's.

"Huh?" stalled Carly as she awoke from her thoughts. Control regained, she commented, "Oh yeah. It's better that way."

As soon as Carly finished her sentence the lights began to dim. Covered by the action of the lights, Freddie took the opportunity to sneak a peek at the girl he had been chasing for most of his life. She was watching the screen attentively, her profile gently cradled by her soft, sweet smelling hair. Although he felt like the luckiest guy on Earth, there was an unidentified feeling spoiling his mood slightly.

Over the years, Carly had developed the ability to know that Freddie was watching her without needing to see him with her eyes. Feeling his eyes on her, she turned her head in his direction and asked with a grin, "Something wrong?"

Freddie's head sling-shotted into a forward position. His heart pounding mightily in his chest, he said, "Absolutely nothing."

* * *

It was a pitiful display that Sam was observing from her vantage point a row above where her friends were sitting. The movie had been going on for 15 minutes, but Sam hadn't watched more than a handful of seconds in total. Instead, she had borne witness to five unsuccessful attempts by Freddie to place his arm around Carly's shoulders. As far as Sam could see, Carly wasn't blocking him at all. Freddie was just chickening out at the last second.

Shaking her head as attempt six went down in flames, Sam muttered with the resemblance of a smile on her face, "He's hopeless." If she were in Carly's position, she would just grab his arm and drape it over her own shoulders. She had already begun fantasizing about the event when she realized that she forgot to add in the stipulation that she was with a guy she liked. She had already begun imagining the scenario, though, so she decided to let it go just this once and chalk it up to laziness. Fantasy Freddie had just let the weight of his arm fall possessively over her shoulders when she heard a rustling from the boy sitting next to her.

The flannel covered arm had traveled half of the distance between them when Sam's face shot in Germy's direction. The most distinguishing characteristic of the face at that moment in time were pursed gently sliding lips that indicated a pair of grinding teeth. Her wild-eyed glare was hidden behind her sunglasses.

Germy's arm immediately crashed back into his body as his eyes seemed to find the direction opposite Sam extremely interesting. The hairs on the back of his neck remained standing for a full minute after he had averted his eyes, an accurate signal of how long Sam glared at him before returning her attention to Freddie. And Carly, right?

* * *

Carly sighed internally as she watched Freddie's arm fall back down to his side. The girl straightened her posture as she made sure that she wasn't blocking him somehow. Everything seemed fine: her hair was back and her shoulders were low and a suitable distance away from her seat. As she went through the mental checklist she acknowledged to herself that she wasn't sure if she wanted him to put his arm around her shoulders, but she knew that she wouldn't mind. After all, it would make the outing feel more like a date and probably help push her conflicted feelings about the situation in some sort of direction.

Unfortunately, it appeared as though Freddie were up against some kind of invisible barrier. When Carly contemplated what could possibly be holding him back, the best explanation was another rejection. She had put the boy through his paces recently. In rapid succession she had utterly rejected him, yelled at him, then invited him to take her out to the movies. He might even be more confused about her feelings towards him than she was. It was her fault he was floundering around wondering how he should act, and it was up to her to take matters into her own hands. And maybe his.

The popcorn had been sitting on Freddie's lap since the start of the movie, so he didn't react at all when Carly's hand crossed over into his personal space. With no warning, however, something warm and incredibly soft wrapped itself around his hand. The boy looked down in surprise to find Carly's hand resting calmly on top of his own. With deliberate slowness that belief the accelerated beating of his heart, Freddie traced a path with his eyes up Carly's arm, past her shoulders, through her neck, and onto the gentlest, most beautiful smile he had ever seen in his lifetime.

Carly had the pleasure of watching Freddie's face go through at least three different shades of red as he turned his hand over and gingerly entwined his fingers within her own. It was as though he were afraid of hurting her. Or perhaps as though he were afraid it was a dream. She gave his hand a gentle squeeze before turning her attention back to the movie screen. A content smile stayed on her lips. She could feel his adoring gaze on her as his grip on her hands became more firm.

This was nice.

* * *

Something had happened which Sam couldn't see or hear from her current vantage point. That was the only plausible explanation for her two friends' sudden exchanged and extended glances, and Freddie's newly developed, near-constant gaze in Carly's direction.

Sam suddenly stood up as though to go to the restroom, keeping her eyes locked on the seats in front of her. Almost immediately after standing she fell back into her seat as a sense of loss dominated her emotions. It was like her mother had just offered her a sandwich and then eaten it in front of her after she tried to take it. They were actually holding hands.

She tried to force herself to take pride in her word. Her two friends wouldn't even be watching the movie together if not for her meddling. It wasn't like she wanted to be in Carly's spot. Sure, Pam might, but Sam? Just as she was about to use this particular argument as an escape, she realized with a sinking feeling of her stomach that she was Pam. She was totally starting to go schizophrenic. That was the only way she could explain why it was taking every ounce of her willpower to prevent herself from pouncing forward and ripping their hands apart using excessive violence.

Her salvation from sanity rending thoughts came from an unexpected front. Sam's right hand, which had been sitting on the closest arm rest convulsively opening and closing, suddenly felt something warm, sweaty, and heavy clamp on to it. A quick glance at her hand revealed that it was being smothered by Germy's grubby digits. A horrified, unintelligible sound, like an angry whimper, escaped from her lips.

Jeremy had noticed that Freddie and Carly were holding hands and decided to take a gamble. The face that looked up into his after his hand had entered the danger zone was a disgusted one. Just when he was sure that he had made the biggest mistake of his life, Sam's face smoothed out into a neutral expression. Maybe his gamble had actually paid off. The teenage boy was so focused on Sam's face and his thoughts that he didn't even notice Sam's left arm rise menacingly into a cocked position.

Normally a hockey mask should provide ample protection for a punch to the face. Germy's face had two things working against it, however. First, the mask had been designed for costumed use and was therefore made of relatively soft plastic. Secondly and perhaps most dangerously, the punch was coming from the left arm of a pissed off Sam Puckett.

Sam's arm crossed the threshold between the two teenagers with the speed and destructive power of a wrecking ball. Moments after she had let loose the cannon, every ear in the movie theater heard two sounds in succession. First there was the loud crack of two hard objects colliding against each other at a high velocity, followed shortly by the sound of heavy yet soft object crashing to the ground.

Sam shook her left hand out as it complained via throbbing pain about being forced to punch something rather hard. After she noticed patrons in front of her looking around to find the source of the noise, the brunette disguised blond girl took a cautious look at Freddie. She found Carly looking straight at her.

* * *

Carly knew the girl had seemed familiar. As the capped girl's face turned back to the movie screen, Carly took one more good look at her profile. As she traced the available features as well as she could in the darkness of the movie theater, she realized that the last time she had seen the girl she hadn't been wearing sunglasses or a baseball cap. She normally didn't imagine people wearing those accessories, and that had been where she knew the girl from: her imagination. This girl was an exact replica of the fifth, most dangerous type of girl she had imagined on the day Freddie asked her out. Carly caught herself gawking at this exported image from her thoughts, and only managed to turn her attention back to the movie after an extreme force of willpower. Even as her eyes acclimated themselves to the vibrant lighting in front of her, the girl's mind remained focused on the girl behind her.

She never would have made the connection if the girl's eyes hadn't seemed to instinctively go towards Freddie. Still, while she had a strong gut feeling that her instinct was right, her brain informed her that this was impossible. If she was the girl Freddie had been losing sleep over lately, it opened up a whole new set of questions. Like what was she doing here? And how had Carly imagined her so perfectly?

Carly decided to sneak one more look to see if the girl was still looking at Freddie. Her eyes fell upon empty seats, however.

* * *

Sam's plans had been effectively ruined thanks to Germy. He was guy for crying out loud. He should be able to take a straight left punch to the face without passing out. Now she was forced to lug his heavy butt out of the room because she knew from personal experience that bodies on floors tended to attract unwanted attention. Somehow it seemed like Carly was on to her also. And so after draping Germy's left arm over her shoulders in a cruel mockery of her earlier fantasy, Sam began the ponderous task of carrying/dragging the boy out of the theater.

The girl comforted herself with the knowledge that she had seen all that she came to see. Freddie and Carly's date was going swimmingly. If her played his cards right, he might even be able to steal a goodnight kiss. As Sam's jaw clenched suddenly, she forced herself to think that he was a horrible kisser. The thought made sense logically, she argued to herself as doubts surfaced. He had close to no experience, after all.

By this point Sam had made it down the aisle stairs and would escape after a quick turn towards the ramp leading out of the room. She couldn't leave before sneaking a peek at the lips she was picturing in her mind, though. A turn of her head gave her the image she had been seeking, but came with the additional view of Carly looking directly at her.

Sam quickly turned her head and continued her escape from the room. Three thoughts repeated themselves in her mind, all vying for dominance and neither succeeding. Stupid Germy for having a glass jaw. Stupid Carly for suspecting her through one of her best disguises. Stupid Freddie for acting like himself and making her feel like crying.

* * *

Freddie noticed Carly almost jump out of her seat out of the corner of his eye. Because the actors on the movie screen were having a calm discussion at the moment, Freddie turned towards his date and asked, "Are you okay?"

Upon hearing his voice, Carly turned her rapidly calming eyes in Freddie's direction. Finding the boy's concerned eyes searching her face, Carly whispered, "It just feels like … I know that girl down there." She nodded in the direction of the baseball capped girl who seemed to be supporting the dead weight of her companion.

Freddie squinted down at the exiting figure. After she exited through the door, he turned towards Carly with a half-amused, half confused expression on his face. "You know that girl, alright," he assured her. "That was Sam."

Carly blinked in surprise. Now that she thought about it, the girl's build was dead-on, and Carly couldn't think of another girl who could easily support someone double their size. Shaking her head, she whispered, "Did you know that earlier?"

Freddie shook his head negatively.

The girl frowned at the boy. "How can that be? You had a way better look at her earlier. You even saw her face."

A shrug lifted his shoulders. "Earlier I saw the disguise, but I would recognize that ham shape anywhere."

"You figured it out by checking out her butt!?" she exclaimed. She was no longer whispering.

The male teenager felt himself beginning to shrink under the glares of his fellow movie goers. Swallowing down his embarrassment, he answered, "Yeah, I guess so."

When Freddie's eyes returned to Carly's face, he found a pout on her lips. They separated to spit out, "I guess you must look at her butt a lot to be able to pick it out in a darkened movie theater."

Freddie's ears perked up as they analyzed both the tone and content of Carly's words. The pleasant surprise forced his own lips into a grin. He lowered his head. With his eyes looking up slightly at Carly, he asked, "Are you jealous?"

Carly's face began to burn. As her eyes looked at something other than Freddie, she answered unconvincingly, "N...no." The girl felt an increased pressure on her hand, forcing her to look into her date's eyes. His head had moved in closer, and Carly could feel her heart rate increasing.

"Look, Carly," he began to whisper, his eyes locked on hers, "I may be able to recognize Sam from her butt, but I could tell it was you if you showed me your pinky."

A smile found its way to Carly's lips. "Is that so?"

Freddie nodded seriously. "Come on, Carly. Remember the computer room? I can tell you're coming even without seeing you."

A small laugh emanated from Carly's warming core. Tilting her head at Freddie, a few strands of hair fell across her cheek as she teased, "Sounds kinda stalkerish."

"Lov ..." Freddie gulped down the rest of what he was going to say, as he turned his head in embarrassment.

The boy felt an elbow nudge him in the ribs as Carly asked bemusedly, "What was that?"

Freddie let loose a sigh. The embarrassing statement had come out reflexively. It was funny how something that he would have said naturally a short time ago had become an emotionally taxing task. His face feeling hotter than it should, he completed, "Love makes you do crazy things." Mission accomplished, he embarrassedly turned his attention back to the movie. Just as he was getting back into the story, his heart melted from a near imperceptible squeeze of his hand.

Carly smiled contently at the movie screen. Everything was right with the world. The "fifth girl" had turned out to be Sam, who was probably just checking up on her to make sure everything was going alright. She would never admit it to her if she confronted her about it, though. That was the type of friend she was, never wanting her good deeds to come to light. Who was that guy with her, though? As her mind drew a definitive blank, she decided that she would ask her about him the next time she saw her.

* * *

When Jeremy opened his eyes he found himself looking straight up into a black, night sky. As he began the surprisingly laborious process of sitting up, a rustling to his right revealed the location of Sam sitting atop an empty food crate. She seemed to have removed the hat and wig, though her released blond hair was still restricted within a bun. As her eyes began to move towards his, the boy averted his eyes in fear. His movement showed him that they were in a nondescript alley, surrounded by tall walls of red bricks, a closed dumpster, and a smattering of empty crates and boxes. The teenager snuck a quick peek at Sam's face and experienced a spike of terror. She didn't look mad.

She looked furious.

An oppressive silence hung in the air as Sam tried to melt Jeremy's face with her eyes and Jeremy studied the nearby walls one brick at a time. Just as the boy had mentally prepared himself to to grovel for his life at Sam's feet, the blond teenager stated, "I'm getting something to eat."

Germy fumbled his attempt to analyze her expectations of him in this instance. He spent a silent moment gathering the courage to ask, "Should I come with you?"

Sam's eyes narrowed suddenly. "What part of, 'You're paying for everything' did you not understand?"

The boy nodded quickly and shifted onto his kneels in preparation for the long journey to a standing position. He allowed himself to think on the bright side in this instance. Sure, if you looked at the date as a whole or examined Sam's facial features things looked grim, but at least he would be eating soon. The world always seemed better on a full stomach.

* * *

Carly took one last pull of her smoothie before declaring herself overstuffed. The contented teenager pushed the fruity concoction away from her body as her eyes fell on the guy sitting across from her. Freddie. Her date. Her best friend. Her eyes attempted to examine him critically, taking smiling notice of the way his eyes seemed to focus themselves upon her hand. It appeared as though he was plotting how to get his hands on them. He was a good looking guy. He wasn't what she would consider hot, but he carried himself well. His face was pleasing to look at, his clothing was always pressed and matched, and he was perpetually groomed and washed. She was also aware of the intangibles: his kindness, his intelligence, and his thoughtfulness. Any girl should be happy to go out on a date with him. And Carly was. But maybe not in the way she should be.

It had been a great date so far; one of her top movie dates of all time. Freddie had been a perfect gentleman: paying for everything, opening doors, pulling back chairs, and being generally attentive. There had been no awkward patches of silence since conversations and comments flowed freely between the two teenagers. Everything had felt natural. Probably since they had been on similar outings before, just not under the same pretense. They were out on a date.

And there lied the problem. As Carly's eyes took in the image of Freddie, she didn't feel the fire that she normally felt at the onset of a relationship. Besides that one time after he had revealed the identity of Sam, her heart rate had been relatively normal. On a good, normal first date, she would have had dozens of those moments. Actually, now that she thought about it there had really only been one other time that Freddie had sent her heart racing. It had been that time he had begged her for an answer. That time she had unknowingly lied.

Abandoning that thought and the raw feelings attached to it, she lifted her head and asked, "So was it everything you thought it would be?"

Freddie's eyes rose from her hand immediately, but it took him a handful of seconds to think of an answer. His thoughts had been focused elsewhere, after all. Eventually, he let out, "It was everything I thought it would be and more." He added with a weak smile, "Thanks for spending it with me."

Carly had known Freddie too long to not notices the awkwardness of his smile. Raising an eyebrow at him, she questioned, "Is something wrong?"

The boy grinned sheepishly at the girl. He had forgotten how empathetic she was. She would be able to sense his misgivings from a mile away. "You just caught me thinking."

"About what?" asked Carly, her eyebrows furrowing.

Freddie didn't want to talk about undeveloped thoughts, but she had forced his hand. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the restaurant table. "What we are now."

Her shoulders shrugged as her thoughts didn't match up with his. "What do you mean?"

The teenager knew that he was going to regret his words later on, but he never had it in him to lie to Carly. "Well are we still just friends? I think we might have progressed beyond this stage." His head tilted to the right questioningly, "Are we going out? We don't need 10 dates to figure out if we like each other. I think we know each other better than we know other members of the opposite gender" He finished with a light pink blush, "So then what? Are we boyfriend and girlfriend now?"

Carly shrunk backwards as the heavy question lurking in the background was brought to light. Tentatively, as softly as she could manage, she answered, "I don't know."

The two teenagers experienced the first awkward silence of the night as they avoided each others eyes to discipline their scattering thoughts. Neither was able to find a clean answer among the faces of the eclectic crowd of Groovy Smoothie patrons. One group of their fellow patrons helped to propel the conversation forward, though.

Carly observed three fiercely independent preteens who were sitting at a high table pressed against the store's front window. Their legs dangling in the air, they each cradled their precious, most likely self-purchased smoothies within their diminutive arms. A soft smile graced Carly's lips as she imagined Freddie, Sam, and herself at that age. That could have easily been them. There had been none of this relationship business hanging in the air then. Look at them, now though. Time had a talent for altering feelings. Turning her attention back to her date, Carly stated, "Well, it's not like we're in any kind of rush. We'll figure it out eventually."

Freddie's attention snapped back to Carly. She could almost see him analyzing her sentence behind his lucid, brown eyes. It was this familiarity with him that allowed her to notice that his agreement with her statement had a hint of disappointment.

With the bemused grin that parents often show to sulking children, Carly asked, "Is something else wrong?"

The boy's head moved backwards in surprise. He had thought he had hidden his misgivings more carefully than that. His right arm moved behind his head, scratching at the back his hair as a sheepish grin formed on his face. "My biggest problem right now is I can't seem to stop you from reading my mind."

Carly's grin widened. "So out with it then, or should I use my special powers to probe even deeper?" The girl placed her pointer and middle fingers at opposite positions across her temple in a classic position used to garner one's psychic energy.

Freddie let loose a small sigh as his thoughts were again forced into the limelight. "It's going to sound selfish and stupid, but I was kind of hoping that we'd have a definitive answer by the end of tonight."

The brunette teenager's head tilted to the right as she asked, "What's your rush?"

The words evoked the image of a dark silhouette illuminated by a generic computer screen patiently waiting for him to come home and log on.

There was something about his hesitation and the way that his eyes drifted away from hers that gave him away. The words which tumbled out of Carly's mouth were weighted with a surprised sadness. "It's HER, isn't it?"

A biting shame allowed the boy to keep his eyes averted even when he could feel Carly's insistent gaze upon his face. Pam was right. He was an idiot. The girl of his dreams sat right in front of him looking at him with her beautiful brown eyes loaded with heart pounding concern. The only thing holding him back from achieving Nirvana was a girl whose face he didn't even know. Who absolutely refused to show it. "I'm sorry, Carly," he began, anchoring his eyes on spot on the tabletop halfway between the two of them.

The girl's chest began to compress painfully. Everything was going great but Carly was still losing to this unknown girl. If it even was a girl. After a minute of Freddie refusing to look into her eyes, she began to stand up to storm out of the restaurant. Just when her chair had been pushed back to give her enough room to stand up, Freddie's arm shot forward and latched onto her wrist. The boy's face finally turned up to meet hers, and she saw that she wasn't exactly losing. The expression on his face was pained, and Carly could feel the torture going on behind his eyes. Freddie was just as confused about the whole thing as she was. The pain disappeared, but its disappearance left a space in her heart that quickly filled itself with spite.

"I know it sounds crazy, Carly," he began, his head dropping slightly into a more submissive position. "It's just that she helped me out at one of the lowest points in my life."

Carly looked at him incredulously. "What do you mean the lowest ..." Her question died off as she realized the point he was talking about. The day when she had broken his heart. The girl did her best to keep her memories of that day from surfacing, but her conscious effort backfired. She recalled with crystal clarity the tightness of his face, the slump of his shoulders, and the way his hands fidgeted against each other. She had known then that he was doing everything in his power to keep himself from breaking down as he began his dejected shuffle out of her bedroom and into the open, electronic arms of the faceless girl.

The brunette teen was rescued from further reflection by Freddie, who looked deeply into her eyes as he continued, "This date is the best I've ever been on. I don't remember half of the movie, but I'll remember the feel of your hand within mine for the rest of my life." The hand he had attached to her arm moved towards her hand, gently encircling it with warmth. As Carly found her eyes drawn towards their point of attachment, Freddie continued, "I'll remember the profile of your face in the dimming movie lights. That lethally cute blush you had on your cheeks when you were jealous of Sam."

Carly's eyes shot back towards Freddie as the aforementioned blush again rose to her cheeks. Flustered badly, she only managed to weakly complain, "I was not jealous!"

The teenage boy nodded complacently. "This is the happiest I've ever been. In my entire life," assured Freddie with a smile that quickly diminished. "But it's tainted."

The eyebrow on the right side of Carly's face raised independently. "Sounds serious."

"It's really not that bad, otherwise this wouldn't be the happiest day of my life, " said Freddie with another flashing smile. "It feels like I'm cheating on her, though."

The boy's eyes continued to search Carly's face. Her face remained carefully neutral, however, as she stated, "I didn't know that you could have that kind of relationship with a girl you've never met."

His cheeks began to color as he defended, "It's not like that. I just ..." he took a moment to find the appropriate phrase. The one he came up with was, "I feel like I owe her."

Carly's body leaned forward, bringing her face closer to his. He felt the effect immediately, displaying it with a deep blush. "Owe her what?"

He found it difficult to process thoughts with Carly's face a foot away from his; with Carly's eyes peering deeply into his soul. He had thought up a last ditch plan weeks ago, however, and now was as good a time as any to vocalize it. "I'm going to give her an ultimatum," he said firmly, the words receiving strength more from his previous planning of it than any sort of resolution he was currently feeling. "If she still refuses to meet me, I'm going to give her up."

Freddie expected some kind of encouragement or acceptance of his plan. He didn't expect to see Carly's lips purse up before she angrily unloaded, "And where does that leave me, Freddie?" Carly's hand retreated from his own as the girl's body pushed itself against the back of her chair and her arms crossed against her chest. Her brown eyes narrowing vindictively, she flippantly asked, "Am I supposed to just wait patiently for her answer?"

The teenage boy licked his lips nervously as he thought of a way to defuse the situation. In the span of a few moments he weighed the reality of the situation against what he surmised Carly was feeling. Focusing on an inconvenient discrepancy, he said softly, "It's not like you're my second choice, Carly."

Carly stiffened slightly, giving away the fact that he had accurately predicted her feelings. She had learned a few legal matters from her Law School drop-out brother, however. One of them was that admission was not proper grounds for dismissal. Her body maintained its icy posture as she retorted, "It feels like it."

"It really shouldn't," assured Freddie, ever so slowly leaning forward into the table. Bringing his face closer and closer to hers. "You're the ... the most wonderful girl I've ever met," stated Freddie, doing his best to express his sincerity with both his voice and his eyes.

Carly exhaled deeply, allowing her arms to fall back to her sides. The worst of the spiteful spike of emotion had passed when she saw the truth in his eyes. Her face remained passive as she asked, "They why are you still thinking about her when we're here, Freddie? On our first real date ever."

Freddie retreated back to his own chair. He kept his eyes off of Carly as he admitted, "I was extremely messed up after ..." his eyes returned to her briefly to indicate, "you know." His eyes then closed as he remembered the depth of the depression he had been thrown into that night. Looking back on it, he had no idea how he had managed to continue living his life; even as robotically as he had. He had always buoyed his self-confidence with the hope that things would get better after high school. His talents would shine to the point where his physical shortcomings became a non-issue, and maybe girls would start to take notice of him. Maybe Carly would look his way. But that night, she had told him ... "It was like my dream had been snuffed out. I lost all hope for a while there."

Carly had been watching him intently, and had felt the emotions hidden behind his words and expressions. A gut wrenching emotion took hold of her as she began to realize what she had done to him. And what this new girl probably meant to him. "So she gave you a new dream?"

"Maybe," he let out initially as he considered the idea. He quickly shook his head, however, and his eyes returned to Carly's own as he explained, "It was more like she gave me a shot of hope. That maybe some girl could like me." He didn't finish the thought with even if it wasn't her, but he didn't need to because they both heard the unspoken words. "I don't think I could have returned to normal without it," he added as an afterthought.

Carly took a good look at his face as she attempted to gather her thoughts and marshal her feelings. She only succeeded in the former by the time she begrudgingly admitted, "I think I understand."

Freddie's eyes searched Carly's face, taking note of its partially masked, pained expression. "You still don't like it though, huh?"

A mirthless smirk took hold of the girl's lips as she said, "If there's any lesson I've learned from you, Freddie Benson, it's that you can't help the way you feel."

The boy found he loathed himself more and more with each moment he kept a smile off of her face. He should have just "acted his intelligence" and kept his mouth shut. He again leaned forward into the table as he asked with desperate eyes, "What do you want me to do, Carly? Say the word and I'll do it."

Carly wanted to scream at the top of her lungs that he should never talk to her again, but she knew that Freddie was the secretly obsessive type. He would do it if she asked him to, and he would keep those unresolved feelings bottled up inside. From there, they would slowly eat him up for the rest of his life. She had already damaged the poor guy enough for one lifetime. Hopefully, she thought as her heart began to ache, he wouldn't return the favor.

Freddie was again surprised as Carly gave him a gentle smile. With slight bowing of her head, she told him, "Do what you need to do, Freddie."

* * *

Emergency countermeasures had been put into place after it became clear that they were dealing with professionals. When the supervisor was later asked by the owner how the situation had spiraled so ridiculously out of control, his response, told in the catatonic manner usually attributed to disaster survivors, had been, "I ... I didn't see it coming. The girl was ... so small ..."

"I can't take much more," whined the pigtailed girl as she stared down at her shaking arms.

"You have to," stated the older woman, clasping her arm around her partner's shoulders companionably. "We're easily replaceable. We can't afford a failure."

"They should assign us one more person at least," muttered pigtails as she stepped through the double doors.

Old lady shook her head. "We're lucky there's one of us for each of them We simply don't have the reserves for more."

"But they won't stop!" she exclaimed. After receiving a warning glare from her partner, pigtails predicted with a half-sob, "They won't ever stop. It's like they're monsters."

"Quiet. They'll hear you," said old lady with a soft, empathetic smile.

Unbeknownst to the over-worked waitresses, even if they had been speaking right on top of the two teenagers, the pair wouldn't have heard them. They were too absorbed in their food and the amnestic effect it had on their thoughts.

Sam wasn't even seeing the food that she picked up and stuffed into her mouth. So far she had successfully ignored the subtle signs her body was sending towards her brain such as an overextended stomach and jaw muscles that were weakening and at the point of cramping. Every plate put in front of her chipped away at the awareness that her computer was sitting at the mIRC logged in screen, silently waiting for her to enter in the room address. Each bite took her mind further away from the ache that she felt every time she imagined her two friends holding hands, smiling at each other, their heads moving in closer for a ... Groaning, she realized that there was no food in her general vicinity. She sent a scathing glare at the boy sitting across the table. She did not remove her eyes from his face until he began to move.

An accomplished eater in his own right, Germy quickly swallowed down the beef with broccoli that he had been chewing on and stood up to get more food. He always thought that you would never be happier at an All-You-Can-Eat buffet than when you were just arriving there on a famished stomach. Today, however, he found himself more elated than he could ever remember as he watched someone else eat. As he stood up, his eyes roamed over the empty plates buried under piles of empty plates. There was no way he could have afforded to pay for a feast of this magnitude at a normal restaurant.

As the large boy passed by the shorter waitress, the one in pigtails, he heard an unmistakable groan coming from her direction. He sent an apologetic grin at the girl before continuing merrily on his way. There was still food to be eaten, after all.

In the future that day would forever be known as the day "The Endless Chinese Food Buffet" did dishonor to its name - by running out of food. By 8:00 pm, they were forced to close their doors for the day.

* * *

It was a typical apartment front door. Made of solid mahogany, the peephole sat in the middle of some symmetrical paneling and the upraised detailing that generally accompanies such designs. The only significance this door held for Carly was that it was Sam's front door.

The date had moved on amiably but uncomfortably after the discussion about Freddie's Internet companion. The only notable thing about the rest of the date was that she managed to get her "opponent"'s aliases: Pam or EngiFanatic depending on Freddie's whim. Carly had parted ways with Freddie at the front of Sam's apartment, the boy insisting that he accompany her through the night shrouded streets after she had announced her intention to visit Sam before heading home. There had been no parting kiss, the romantic mood of the evening having been systematically shattered at the Groovie Smoothie. After a friendly, though awkward, farewell, Carly watched Freddie walk away normally, his hands at his sides and his posture erect. There was even a little skip to his step. It appeared as though he was alright with the situation as it stood. She wasn't quite sure how she felt, however, and so here she was, prepared to discuss matters with Sam face-to-face.

The door opened, revealing Sam's mother in a form-fitting, black cocktail dress. The tall blond woman's face immediately lit up into a large smile as her eyes fell on the form of Carly. "Carly, it's so nice to see you!"

"You look great, Ms. Puckett," said Carly sincerely, her eyes helplessly drawn towards Sam's mother's curves thanks to the revealing dress design.

After expressing her gratitude with a widening of her smile, Sam's mom indicated with a welcoming wave of her arm that the girl should come into the apartment. As Carly stepped through the front door and closed the wooden portal behind her, the woman returned to the task of gathering objects from the living room. Focusing intently on her search for her car keys, Ms. Puckett said offhandedly, "So how's Sam behaving in school nowadays?"

"She's actually been pretty good lately," said Carly with a smile of her own. Carly couldn't actually remember the last time she had witnessed Sam's mischief. That didn't mean she wasn't doing it, of course, but at least she was being more covert about it.

"That's great," said Ms. Puckett, with less emotion than Carly would have expected. "You know, you should get Sam out of the house more often," she said suddenly, lending weight to her words by looking directly at Carly. Her nose wrinkled slightly as she complained, "She's been spending too much time on the computer."

Carly's eyebrows knit together in confusion. She knew Sam knew her way around a computer, but she didn't think she spent every spare moment at one. Tilting her head slightly, her right pointer finger tapped her chin as she thought aloud, "Sam's on the computer a lot?"

Sam's mother again looked up from her search; this time to fix a triumphant grin on the girl, this having been the first time that she had known more about her daughter than her friends in a while. "Just about every second she's home," she assured Carly, her eyes returning to her hunt. Carly's thoughts about the subject were interrupted as Ms. Puckett continued, "Not that I'm really complaining. We've fought less in the past few weeks than we have since she could start talking. It's just not healthy to be sitting at a computer for so long."

Carly nodded her agreement. She had actually given Freddie the exact same speech before on multiple occasions. It looked like it was time to share it with Sam. Still, what was that friend doing on the computer? "I'll talk to her about it," Carly promised, looking forward to the talk a little too much. She couldn't help it. It was a good speech.

The smile that Sam's mother fixed on her was impossibly charming. The man she was going out with that night didn't stand a chance. "In any case, Sam should be home any minute now. She hasn't eaten dinner, and she doesn't have any money to buy anything."

"Like that's stopped her before," muttered Carly under her breath.

Having not heard the comment, Sam's mom finished, "You can wait for her in her room if you want, Carly. There's a television in there."

Carly recognized a cue when it presented itself, so she nodded and moved towards Sam's bedroom in the back of the apartment. As she walked, a thought struck her. All of that computer talk reminded her that she hadn't checked her e-mail in a few days. Turning around, she called out, "Ms. Puckett, is it okay if I check my e-mail real quick?"

Sam's mother smiled, "Feel free, Carly."

The brunette girl moved towards the dining room, where she knew the computer sat on a second-hand wooden desk. The girl was completely unaware of the screen that lay behind the screen saver and the handle that sat prominently in the spot labeled "nickname".

* * *

Author's Notes: This one was fun to write. The length kind of spiraled out of control, which usually happens when I'm trying to weave two storylines together. I contemplated splitting it in half about halfway through, but decided against it. As it is, I'm still kind of splitting it in half, but in a more appropriate, dramatic spot. Feel free to argue otherwise. ^^ My next goal is to go back to the other chapters and see if there's anything wrong with them. Look forward to some edits by the time the next chapter of this story comes out.

Oh, what do you guys think of my mental image of Sam's mom? I think her current build would explain a lot about Sam's personality, but I'm open to intelligent discussion in regards to this character seeing as how she hasn't been introduced in the actual television series.

I've run out of my original skeletal outline. This could mean a few things. The next chapters may be run backwards to and re-edited significantly as plot lines tie up into unrecognizable knots. Also it may take more time to come out depending on when the muse decides to strike me. Hopefully hard. Speaking of which, I'd like to extend a huge thank you to everyone that has reviewed this story so far. It really gives me fuel to keep writing to know that I'm not just shouting my story down a well. There are people that are enjoying reading it as much as I'm enjoying writing it.

And to all of you other readers who have made it this far, thanks yet again. I know that as far as fan fiction stories go, this one is rather lengthy. Thanks for spending your free time with me.

P.S. Since posting this thing 2 hours ago, I've gone back and re-edited it at least 5 times now. This thing is stupid sloppy it seems like. I posted it as is because I knew that if I didn't it would have been sitting there for another week, but still. Eww. Sorry guys.

See you next time!

Falling Further


	6. What lies beneath the mask

The street walled along its length by apartment buildings of varying shapes and sizes was empty except for a fragmented string of cars and confused male teenager. A bystander would not recognize anything wrong with Freddie as he strolled down the sidewalk with his hands in his khaki pockets, but within himself the teenager was more confused than he had ever been in his lifetime. His heart was numbed into insensitivity by something a physicist would designate as emotional wave interference. It was like his feelings were canceling each other out. His joy at finally going on a date with Carly balanced out by his guilt at leaving Pam waiting for him online. His pride at sticking up for his nebulous relationship with Pam voided by the sheer idiocy of injuring his chances of taking another step with a girl he had yearned after for a great deal of his life.

The teenager suddenly threw a savage kick at a nearby lamp post. The raised light source provided a spotlight to his action, and the action proceeded in a suitably dramatic fashion: a swift low kick to the base of the lamp post, followed by a loud clanging sound, and finally a short hop backwards from the solid object as a grimace affixed itself onto his face. Freddie welcomed the sharp pain that burst from his right foot. The sensation broke his focus on his emotions, allowing him to properly rationalize his situation as he hopped around in pain.

He immediately decided that it was no use mulling over the past endlessly. What happened had happened, and he needed to move forward to resolve the issues that he had brought about with his carelessness. In hindsight, he believed firmly that even with its bittersweet ending, the date had been the best of his, albeit brief and inexperienced, love life. Furthermore, it had provided him with next logical step in the relationship morass he found himself entrenched within.

Freddie had decided upon the necessity for the ultimatum a couple of nights ago when Pam had used Carly's name. He had always been a little paranoid when it came to the Internet, making sure to only share his first name with people he had never met. He would never share his last name or his location, and definitely not the names of his friends. Of course his conversations with Pam had been occurring with such frequency and depth that it may have accidentally slipped out at some point, but he didn't think that it was possible for the conversations to flow in Carly's direction. After all, his "relationship" with Pam had been an escape from his failure of one with Carly, and he wasn't stupid enough to complain to a girl he found that he liked about another girl that he used to have feelings for. Actually, he had proven to himself that night that he still had strong feelings for Carly. Shaking that thought off, he concluded that if he kept the probability of the conversational topics in mind, then it was actually more likely that Pam had learned Carly's name on her own. Unfortunately, that would open up an entirely new plane of questions: ones that would be most easily answered if they met face to face.

Even having come to all of those conclusions, Freddie had been reluctant to unleash the ultimatum upon Pam. He had sat on his hands throughout an entire evening's worth of chatting. Based on her previous reactions to the topic, there was a good chance that she would just run away; abandoning both their chats and him. He didn't want that to happen. The teenager had become addicted to the free forum for his emotions and thoughts, and Pam's receptiveness to all of it. He didn't want it to end, even with a date he had been chasing since he understood what dates were looming in the near horizon. So he had let it hang, waiting for some sort of signal before he delivered his words to Pam. He had been living out the conversations on borrowed time.

Now Carly had provided him with an appropriate signal, and it was time for him to act. There was really no other way around it, he realized with a sigh. After a steadying set of deep breaths, Freddie straightened his slumping shoulders and began moving towards his home at a quicker pace.

* * *

"Never come back!" spat out the restaurant owner in a thick Chinese accent as he slammed the door on their faces.

The pair stood staring at the door that prominently displaced closed blinds behind it's five foot, glass window for a while before Sam suddenly announced, "I'm going home," and began walking away in the appropriate direction. She didn't realize until she reached a stoplight a couple of blocks away from the restaurant that Germy had been following her. Her head turning towards her follower, Sam's right eyebrow rose high on her forehead as she asked, "What are you doing?"

"Es ... ah CHOO! ... escorting you ho, home."

Sam attempted to dodge the pitiful look he was throwing at her. She failed. No one could pull off the pitiful look quite like Germy, especially if a little tail of snot had managed to escape his nose like it had on his latest sneeze. Shaking her head to ward off the image, she continued across the street. The pedestrian signal light was red, but there were no cars in sight and she could probably lose her straight laced stalker.

After crossing the street, she found to her dismay that the red light hadn't held him back like she thought it would. It looked like there was no other way around it. She wheeled around prepared to throw a punch at his unprotected face. Before she could throw the knockout blow, however, she found herself crouching low to the ground, her hand clutching at her stomach. The quick movement had brought a sharp pain to her overloaded organ.

When Sam looked up again, she found Germy looking down at her with a concerned expression on his face. "Are you okay?" He quickly turned his head to sneeze into the night air.

"Go ... go away Germy," growled Sam unconvincingly through gritted teeth as her stomach refusing to settle down.

The boy's tongue dragged itself against front of his upper teeth as he contemplated the situation. Sam looked off into the distance, trying to force her stomach to stop bothering her through sheer force of will. Germy broke the silence first, saying, "We can wait ... HAH Choo! ... for you to digest the food. Or you can ... you know . Heh chee! ... lean on me until you, you get your stomach under control."

Sam frowned down at the ground. Her best option was really to take him up on his offer. But it was Germy who was offering the service. His nickname provided the best structural argument against the plan available. Still, if she used him, she would be home quicker, and would therefore be back in the chatroom faster. Without looking up, she commanded in clear tones, "Put the mask back on."

Germy's brow furrowed down at Sam. "You broke off th, the lower half of the mask with that punch. It won't st ... heh CHEE! ... stop my sneezing."

Sam's face angled upwards so that she was looking him straight in the eyes as she said, "I know. I just don't want to see your face right now."

Germy began to bite his lower lip upon hearing Sam's words. "Because I'm so ugly?"

"No," denied Sam as she began to stand up. "It's because I might take an instinctive swing if I see your face that close to me."

After Sam was back on her own two feet, she slung her left arm around Germy's shoulders and began using the boy as a crutch. The accelerated reddening of Germy's face was lost on the girl as she was doing her best to forget that she had voluntarily placed herself within the precarious sneezing distance of the human germ factory. If she could have taken her mind off of the germs crawling all over her crutch like a second skin, she might have found the situation comfortable. The body she was leaning against was large, soft, and warm, after all. Unfortunately, Sam's mind refused to move beyond the bacteria. It probably didn't help that the boy was sneezing at least once every 10 seconds.

Sam's stomach recovered within a couple of blocks worth of walking. As soon as she knew the nausea had passed, she separated from Germy by pushing him away. She hadn't meant to push him hard enough to slam against the wall of the nearby building, but the boy's concentration had been entirely focused on helping Sam move forward. The girl winced slightly as he hit the wall, but continued on her way without checking up on him. His natural padding prevented any serious damage, and immediately after the collision the boy began walking back towards Sam.

They continued in an awkward marching pattern, with Germy maintaining a constant distance of five feet behind the girl. The old "out of sight, out of mind" adage kicked in, and Sam quickly forgot that she was being escorted as her thoughts inverted upon her.

Why was she here fighting her stomach for every step towards her home? She should be happy for her two friends, not so desperate to spy on them that she was willing to go on a date with Germy. God, she had just gone on a date with Germy. When she got home, she had to take showers. Many, many showers. Possibly fill the bathtub with bleach and just hop right in. All so that she could spy on her two best friends, and confirm with her own eyes just how close the two of them had been on their date. No matter how she looked at it, it didn't make sense unless ...

She had become an expert at cutting off her thoughts lately, so she performed that task effortlessly as she focused on getting home. The result was a mile and a half of thought-free, silent walking. Once her apartment building was in sight, Sam turned towards Germy as she extended a pointed finger in its direction. "That's my home," she stated flatly.

"Oh," said Germy, his eyes shifting away from Sam's. After a slight shrug, Sam turned to walk the rest of the way home. As she began to walk away, Germy coughed twice to clear his throat and called out, "Thanks ... ah CHOO! . for the date."

A smirk found its way to Sam's face. He still considered it a date after all that they'd been through. Turning around one more time, she said with a serious expression, "Just remember this is a one time thing."

Germy nodded quickly. "I just wanted to go on a date ... ah CHOO ... once in my high school career." He swiped the back of his hand underneath his nose quickly. Just as Sam was about to turn away again, he added, "I never dreamed of getting between you and Freddie."

"Wh ... what?" asked a surprised Sam.

"Well, you like Freddie," said Germy matter-of-factly, his face the same as it would have been if he were giving the time.

"I do not!" shouted Sam with a reddening face.

The volume of the shout brought Germy's attention to Sam's face, and the savage, violent look he found there caused him to step away quickly. Any thoughts he had held about pressing the issue fled before the aggressive stance of Sam. It was a stance he'd seen her use before she leapt onto someone's back and pounded them into the ground. Immediately after his mind identified the stance, his legs quickly followed his thoughts.

The fleeing boy hadn't really needed to voice his thought, however, because it had already been formulated in Sam's mind waiting for an opening to spread through her consciousness. Germy's statement provided such an opening, and the thought capitalized as viciously as the rest of Sam's being. The heat drained out of the abandoned girl as she found herself facing facts she had purposely been setting aside for months. With a thought burdened stride Sam began a mechanical trek towards her apartment.

The chats had been going on for more than two months. This meant that she wanted them to continue, and probably looked forward to them as much as Freddie claimed to. No, she admitted to herself that she definitely did as she stepped into the elevator door. After all, she had agreed to go on a date with Germy just to keep the chats alive ... and to spy on him. She allowed herself to recognize for the first time that she had only been interested in Freddie. This whole evening she had viewed Carly, her best and only true friend, as an object: a faceless obstacle that stood in Pam's ... no, her way.

"But her way of what?" she thought as she stepped out of the opened elevator door and walked steadily towards her apartment's front door. Images bombarded her mind's eye. She had always had daydreams of having a boyfriend, but his features had been perpetually blurry. She had just known that he was cute somewhere behind the haze. Lately, however, the features of the image had been filled in. With Freddie. Freddie's body. His hands. His face. Eyes. Smile. Laugh.

She very nearly collided with her mother as the two females converged on the door. Sam shook her head. She should have smelled her mom before she got that close. A heavy aroma of perfume clung desperately to the woman. Combining that with her tight black dress revealed that she was going out on a date. That was a big surprise. Not even sparing her mother a second glance, Sam called out as she passed her by, "See you tomorrow morning."

"Just in time, Sam," said Ms. Puckett coolly. "Carly just went in to check her e-mail."

Sam's eyebrow rose as she wrapped her head around the fact that Carly was currently in her home and not hanging out with Freddie. Seconds later, her eyes widened as she remembered that she had left the mIRC program opened at the log-in screen, with every field filled out except for the password.

Sam flew across the apartment, vaulting over the coffee table and sliding through a tight wall corner. She was rewarded for her hustle with the sight of Carly about to reach down for the mouse to disable the spinning vortex screensaver. "Carls!" she exclaimed nearly breathlessly. Carly turned around immediately, aiming a pleased smile in Sam's direction and leaving the mouse untouched. Sam's eyes flickered from the still swirling computer screen to Carly's face. "What brings you here so late?"

"I just wanted to check up on my stalker," chided Carly, her smile magically transforming into a smirk.

The breath left Sam's body as though she had been punched in the solar plexus. "Your what?" she asked defensively.

"I know it was you in the movie theater, Sam," admitted Carly immediately. She pushed lightly on Sam's left shoulder with her right hand, her face now beaming at her friend. "It was unexpectedly sweet of you to check if the date was going to turn out okay."

Sam almost couldn't believe her luck. Carly had completely misjudged the situation. Well, that wasn't so surprising considering that she didn't have an accurate view of Sam's perspective. She decided to happily ride the wave of Carly's misconception. "So everything went alright after I left," said Sam before she began searching her friend's face for an answer.

Carly nodded shortly a couple of times before a question she had tucked away earlier resurfaced. "Hey, who was that big guy with you?"

A quick calculation told Sam that it would be alright to share the truth this time. "Or at least some of the truth," she thought as she concocted a complimentary, truth blurring story on the fly. "It was Germy."

Carly blinked at her friend as she unraveled her mental image of the costumed kid. First the clothes were changed into jeans and an oversized t-shirt, then the mask was removed, and finally the entire body was involved in a nasal shattering sneeze. "Wow. It really was Germy," marveled Carly.

Sam began leading Carly towards her room and away from the screen saved computer screen, calling out as she moved, "Yeah, I figured I needed some additional cover, so I bullied him into coming with me."

Carly followed after her friend easily, her position behind the blond girl not revealing the absolute expression of relief on Sam's face as she did so. "I have to hand it to you, Sam. That was ingenious. He really drew most of my attention with that costume."

"Not all of it," stated Sam as she entered her bedroom and began to look around for the television remote. "I caught you looking at me a few times. It's what forced me to leave, really."

"It's kind of funny actually," said Carly, shaking her head with a smile as she took a seat on Sam's solid green bed sheet covered bed.

Sam turned to toss a questioning expression at her seated friend. "What was funny?"

Carly leaned backwards onto the bed, supporting her weight with her outstretched arms. "Well I thought you were Pam."

Time stopped for Sam as her heart began pounding at a super-human speed. While the gut-wrenching feeling attacked her soul with more vehemence than ever before, the girl did her utmost to keep the pain off of her face. Because of her effort, her expression remained neutral as Carly continued, "That's the name of Freddie's internet girl."

The feeling allowed her to laugh, though the emotional strain gave the sound a weakened quality that drew a raised eyebrow from Carly. Aware of the questioning look on her friend's face, Sam asked nervously, "So how did you know it was me? And not Pam."

"You actually had me completely fooled about your identity," admitted Carly. "Freddie was the one who figured it out."

It was Sam's turn to raise an eyebrow. "He saw through the disguise?" She knew he was perceptive, but that was quite a feat. The disguise she had worn had been one of her best, even fooling her mom the first few times she had worn it. Sam was impressed.

Carly grinned at her friend. "Maybe I deserve an assist," speculated Carly. "I kind of drew his attention to you as you were leaving the room."

Sam found the remote and aimed it at the television before a thought came to her. She faced her friend and asked, "How did he pull that off? He wasn't even looking at me before I turned to leave."

"That is another funny thing," said Carly, still sporting the same grin. "He recognized you from the shape of your butt."

Neither of the two girls knew how deeply Sam could blush until that moment, when Sam's face reached record temperatures. After a moment of stunned silence, the blond girl sputtered, "I'm ... I'm going to murder him."

Carly let loose a long peal of laughter at the appearance of Sam's rare flustered look. After the laughter died away, she empathized, "You know, I was about to murder him, too." When Sam turned a perplexed look in her direction, Carly explained, "He just admitted to knowing another girl's anatomy so intimately that he could pick it out of a darkened theater."

The thought drew a little bit of the embarrassment out of Sam; enough to allow her to grumble, "Could have saved me some trouble. Why didn't you?"

It was Carly's turn to blush as her eyes trailed off to one of the bedroom walls. After a moment of biting her lower lip as she remembered what Freddie had said, she said with a deeper blush, "He talked his way out of it."

Sam decided to let that particular conversation end there. Dwelling on the topic was causing a flare-up of the dull pain in her chest. Wanting to move the conversation away from the movie theater, she hastily asked, "So uh, what happened after the movie?" She finally turned the television on at that point, and their chat was quickly framed in the nervous chattering of two adults as they explored a dark crypt.

Carly spread out fully on top of Sam's bed, folding a pillow so that it propped her head towards the television. Once she found herself in a comfortable position, she shrugged nonchalantly and answered, "Normal date stuff, I guess. We stopped by the Groovie Smoothie to talk, and then he walked me over here before we said, 'Goodnight.'"

A slight stiffening of Sam's shoulders was the only indication that a question had just screamed itself into existence. Struggling successfully to keep her tone normal, an endeavor aided by the fact that she was now sitting at the foot of the bed and facing the television, Sam asked, "Did you kiss him goodnight?"

The blush reappeared on Carly's face as she looked away and quietly answered, "No."

Relief flooded through Sam's body like a cold splash of water. The girl closed her eyes, allowing herself to bathe in the feeling for a full moment before tucking it away and spinning around to face her friend. Once their eyes connected, Sam exclaimed, "So you don't like him then!"

Carly spun around in the bed and buried her head in a pillow. A second later, Sam heard a pillow-muffled voice complain, "I don't know!"

Sam took in the confused form of her friend before kneeling onto her bed and crawling up to Carly's torso. Her right hand absently combed through the brunette girl's curly locks of hair as she said gently, "You should probably figure something out soon, Carls." Sam briefly wondered where these words were coming from, or what their purpose was, before continuing, "I mean, I enjoy torturing the dork more than anyone, but even I think this is bordering on cruel and unusual punishment."

A groan emitted from the flipped over girl. Again muffled by the pillow, the quickly paced words which came to Sam were, "I know, but it's hard! I know in my head that Freddie's a cute, nice guy, up there with some of the best that I've dated, but every time I look at him, I just see Freddie. Not a cute guy or a nice guy. Just Freddie." Her head sunk deeper into the pillow, meaning Sam barely heard Carly say, "Any way, it's up to him now."

"What do you mean?" asked Sam as she moved her head closer to Carly's to better hear her muted words.

"Oh, that's right, I didn't tell you," Carly murmured. The girl rolled onto her side, propping her head up against her right arm whose elbow she jammed into the pillow she had been talking into. An indignant expression on her face, she retold, "So we're sitting at the Groovie Smoothie and he brings up the other girl!"

After hearing Carly's words, Sam's eyes widened in surprise. She had imagined that Carly's physical presence would entirely block out any thoughts about other girls. About Pam. About her. Swallowing down the feeling, she asked suspiciously, "On his own?"

A chagrined expression appeared on Carly's face as she mulled over the memory. "Maybe I kind of prodded it out of him," she admitted.

The blond girl nodded in tune with her thoughts. That made at least a little more sense. Still ... "So ... what did he say about her?"

Carly completed her rotation so that she was now lying on her back, her arms folded behind her head. "Not much. Nothing crazy or that didn't make sense," said Carly as though she were working off of a mental checklist. She looked directly into Sam's eyes as she said, "I don't think he's in love with her ... yet." Carly looked away after making that statement, causing her to miss the flicker of pain that flew across her friend's face. Her eyes focused on the corner of Sam's bed that was closest to her feet, she finished guiltily, "And I don't want him to."

Sam's tilted her head questioningly at the side of Carly's head. "Don't want him to what?"

The answer that immediately popped into the head that Sam was focused on was, "to stop loving me", but the one she gave to Sam was, "To fall in love with this EngiFanatic girl." She added snidely a second later, "If that's what she/he really is."

An indignant feeling flew to the forefront of Sam's mind, filling the girl with the desire to lash out at her best friend. She held the emotion in check with the knowledge that doing so would not only reveal her secret but injure her relationship with one of the few people whose opinions she actually cared about. She latched her attention on to the television and began to flip through channels until the feeling passed. When she felt like she had regained control over herself, she observed, "It sounds like you have a grudge against EngiFanatic."

"Do I?" pondered Carly aloud as she tossed a quizzical stare at her friend.

"Do you?" fired back Sam with an aggressive grin on her face.

Carly's face returned to the pillow, leaving Sam with a muffled, "Maybe." The blonde girl's immediate retort was stopped dead in its tracks by a sour look that Carly's head turned around to toss in her direction. "Isn't it weird to start liking someone over the computer without meeting them face to face?"

Sam's initial answer, an exaggerated shrug, was soon accompanied by, "You can learn a lot about someone through online chatting."

Carly body followed the turned state of her head and the brunette teenager found herself asking the back of Sam's head, "Isn't it better to meet people around you? In real life?"

Again, Sam gave a large shrug. "People tend to be more honest online," she said as she channel surfed like a professional. Her preoccupation with the television didn't allow her to see Carly's head shoot up from the pillow as a realization struck her at full force. Completely oblivious to the change in Carly's positioning, Sam rattled off, "People can interact without the emotional armor they wear all day."

A shaking of the twin sized bed told Sam that Carly had just jumped out of her current position, and suddenly from a position right next to her ear she heard Carly loudly accuse, "You met someone online, too!"

Shocked by the intensity, proximity, and accuracy of Carly's accusation, Sam also hopped off of the bed. Her brain was unable to keep up with her reflexes, however, and she only managed to ask, "Wh ... what?"

Carly stood up, keeping pace with the steadily retreating girl. Poking her right pointer finger against Sam's left shoulder, she said, "You're seeing someone through these 'honest online chats'!"

Desperate times called for desperate measures, and so Sam decided to pull out all of the stops. Normally when she lied to Carly she didn't use the entirety of her bluffing ability. Sam employed this tactic so that she could lull Carly into thinking that she could tell when Sam was lying. She had only been forced to remove the limiters 5 times ... maybe 6 ... well, not that many times in the lifetime of their friendship, and it had worked like a charm every time. Keeping her voice steady and fixing her eyes on Carly's, Sam said, "I'm never on the computer, Carls."

"You're ... you're lying to me!" said Carly with a mixture of shock and awe brewed on her face.

Sam's thought process stalled up as the impossible happened. Carly had never even come close to catching her before. What had given her away? Her face, her posture, her tone, and the words she chose: they were all perfect. Still not quite believing that she was caught, she stammered, "Wh ... what are you talking about?"

Carly crossed her arms against her chest, fixing a questioning stare on Sam's face. "Your mom told me you're on the computer all day when you're home."

Inwardly a plethora of curses materialized out of nothingness and aimed themselves in her mother's direction for setting her up for an unexpected fall. Sam realized that the only possible option now was to go on the offensive, which was just as well. She didn't really know how to do defensive. Placing her fists on her hips, she gave Carly an incredulous smirk as she asked, "You'd believe my guy hopping mom over me?"

"Why would you mom lie to me, Sam?" asked Carly, not budging an inch physically or mentally.

Sam shrugged her shoulders as she raised her palms upwards innocently, as though she was not attempting to hide anything. "She doesn't need a reason to lie, Carls. Lying comes as naturally to that woman as giving wedgies does to me."

Still solid as a rock, Carly stated, "You never gave me a wedgie."

The blonde girl's hands threw themselves away in exasperation. "I never had a reason to!"

Carly leaned forward suddenly, her eyes widening as she exclaimed, "And we're back to my original point!"

It looked like Sam was going to have to go on the defensive after all. Letting loose a grunt of frustration, the teenager turned her attention back to the television, aware that Carly was about to unload a dizzying barrage of questions at her.

Not one to disappoint, Carly moved close to Sam, tilting her head to the right as she asked, "So what's he like?"

"I'm not seeing anyone!" exclaimed Sam, though she found her mind focusing on Freddie. Dorky, nerdy Freddie, who had streaks of intelligence, kindness, and, judging from what Carly told her earlier, even loyalty towards a girl had never met or promised anything to.

Her train of thought was broken as Carly questioned, "Where did you meet him?"

"Nowhere!" spat out Sam. But that first time he had been following Carly around like a puppy. He had been so focused on everything Carly was saying and doing that it had been unsatisfyingly easy to trip him. The feeling she had when he threw that bewildered expression in her direction, however ...

"So you only met him online too?" interrupted Carly yet again. Sam found to her dismay that Carly was inching closer to her by the second, and the hungry look in her eyes made it feel like she was intent on peeking directly into her brain.

"Come on, Carly ..." whined Sam. Technically it felt like what Carly had asked was the case, though. Most of their conversations up until they began chatting online had been physical in nature: a chase or a punch leading into an extended argument. She had not known that Freddie's love for computers originated in their disconnection from the real world. And Freddie had not known that her favorite thing to do on a Sunday afternoon was find a quiet field, and lie down with her face towards the sky and relinquish her senses to nature.

Carly ceased her assault due to the near pleading tone in Sam's voice. With a dramatic sigh, the brunette girl collapsed backwards onto the bed, assuring herself mentally that Sam would tell her all of the details eventually. There was no need to force them out of her. Yet. Her eyes focusing on the lazily spinning, alternating black and white bladed ceiling fan, she said offhandedly, "Maybe I should find some anonymous guy online, too."

Upon hearing those words, Sam turned around and fixed her friend with a direct look. Her own arms folding against her chest, she asked, "What's wrong with what you have now?"

"Nothing," said Carly at first, then added miserably seconds later, "Everything."

"What do you mean everything?" frowned Sam. Her eyes rolled up towards the ceiling as she listed, "You have a ... a decent looking guy. He's ... he's nice. Nerdishly smart. And he'd willingly rip out his own eyeballs for you." Her eyes returned to her prone friend.

"He's Freddie," answered Carly ultimately before rolling over again and returning her face to the soft pillow.

"And?" asked Sam as she stood up and walked closer to Carly's head in preparation for a muffled answer.

Carly invalidated her effort by moving to a sitting position. "That's it. That's the problem," stated Carly after she caught Sam's eyes with her own. "I've known him as Freddie the best friend for so long that I'm finding it hard, maybe impossible, to see him as anything else." And that was really the heart of the matter. If Carly thought about it, just two months ago she had been thinking of ways to get him to look at Sam. A cold panic broke out over the girl as she remembered something that she had conveniently forgotten over the past week. After gnawing on her lower lip for a moment, she said lightly, "You know, even if you were a little hesitant, you just sold Freddie pretty vigorously."

Sam's arms dropped to her sides as she lost sight of the flow of the conversation. Tilting her head to the right, she questioned, "What are you getting at now?"

Carly took a deep breath, and then stood up so that the girls' eyes were more level with each other. "You don't like Freddie, do you?" Her careful expression tilted to the left as she explained, "It would be really messed up if I kept bringing this topic up in front of you if you did, you know."

Ignoring the vicious beating of her heart, Sam again put on her poker face. "Who would like that dork?" she asked with the beginnings of a smirk on her lips. "I'd rather go out with Germy."

As Carly gave a shrug and allowed the matter to drop out of emotional necessity, Sam inwardly confirmed two things. It had been one of the most successful lies she had ever told. It had been one of the most painful lies she had ever told.

* * *

"Maybe she's mad about my date with Carly," reasoned Freddie out loud after a time check revealed it was 12:30 am and Pam still hadn't signed on. He pushed his keyboard deeper into his desk, giving him room to lay his head down on top of his folding arms. The boy had hoped somewhere in the back of his mind that his date with Carly would diminish his desire to stay up all night chatting with a girl he had never met face to face. It hadn't. And so here he was, mere hours after what should have been a milestone in his life, taking in the faint mixture of soap and pine cleaner as he anxiously screened the chatroom's scrolling text for the words, "EngiFanatic has entered the room."

The thought drew forth an undeniable feeling of disgust. He'd seen 'player's in action before: guys who held concurrent relationships with multiple women for their own pleasure. The process, which by prolonged necessity ignored the feelings of the girls involved, had appeared repugnant to him, and he had imagined that if he were placed in a similar situation he would do the honorable thing and choose one of the girls immediately, letting down the others as gently as possible.

It had sounded impossibly right at the time, but now that he found himself in the thick of what he had imagined was an impossible position, forced to choose between two girls, he discovered himself to be a pathetic hypocrite. If he had been given the option between choosing one girl or continuing with both, he had to admit that he was strongly leaning towards the latter. The teenager buried his head deeper into his arms as his level of shame rose to a higher level. Was it guy ... no, human nature to want it all, or was he just one of those morally bankrupt, disgusting guys that he had righteously looked down on in the past?

His salvation from self-inflicted torment came in the form of the words he had waited all night for. With joy-enhanced reflexes, he quickly typed, "Welcome back!"

"It's good to be back!" was the returning exclamation from Pam.

"And that's the last we're going to hear from those two all night," teased one of the room's regulars.

Freddie felt his ears burning. Of course it had to be obvious to the rest of the room what was going on between the two of them. Either of the two would completely cease interacting with the rest of the room once the other logged on. They were the last two to leave the chatroom 80% of the time, and always within 5 minutes of each other. He wondered briefly how the other room members perceived their relationship. Then he received a request to enter a private chat with Pam, and the rest of the world faded away into a blurry vision.

...

The chat program closed without complaint, even though it had been kept open for nearly three days. As the computer background revealed the two characters locked in their perpetual position, the world came back into focus along with the following two realizations: after three nights of chatting he hadn't even hinted at the ultimatum, and he still hadn't confront Pam about how she knew Carly's name. He had been telling himself for days that he would take care of the latter one tomorrow. Now that a new item was added to the procrastinating list, however, he wondered on which day that tomorrow would eventually land. Or if it would ever come at all.

Freddie physically, violently shook his head to clear his mind. The clock was warning him that he had to go to sleep immediately. He had actually fallen into a deep sleep during his last English class, which took place during first period (otherwise known as in four hours). The teacher liked him enough to let him go with a warning, but had cautioned him that the next time he was caught snoozing in class she would be forced to write him up.

Unfortunately for his sleeping plans, the moment his head hit the pillow, his thoughts of Pam resurfaced and refused to submerge.

* * *

A huge, honking sneeze alerted Carly that Germy was in her general vicinity. Her usual cautious glance to make sure she wasn't in sneeze spray range revealed that he was walking in her direction. The girl had time to turn back to her locker and retrieve her History books before Germy arrived next to her. Like always, the boy stood silently to the side, waiting for Carly to acknowledge him before he approached her and began talking. Carly turned to Germy with a welcoming smile and asked, "What's up?"

Germy's eyes remained averted as he answered, "Freddie wanted me to tell you that ... hah CHOO! ... he won't be walking with you ho ... ho ... heh CHEE! .. home today."

"What happened?" asked Carly, her facial features displaying her concern.

Germy attempted to swallow a sneeze. It didn't work. After running the back of his hand under his nose quickly, he answered, "He got detention. In English," he added quickly.

The girl's facial features shifted into a confused expression. It was only fifth period. He should have plenty of time to tell her himself. "Why did he send you to tell me?"

Germy gave a huge shrug of his shoulders. "He said you would figure it out."

"What did he get detention for?" asked Carly before her thoughts drove her to absently chew on the bottom left half of her lower lip.

"He fell asleep," answer Germy quickly before succumbing to another sneeze.

All semblances of a smile or pleasantry in general vanished from Carly's face the moment she realized what could have kept Freddie from sleeping on a Sunday night/Monday morning. Did he really have to talk to her all night? He had probably done the same thing on Friday and Saturday night. What was there to talk about if they had never met? She wasn't sure she could sustain a conversation with Freddie for that long, but she knew she wouldn't be uncomfortable or bored being alone with him for that long. Just being with your friends was enough to turn the boring moments into time well spent. Were they really able to get that kind of feeling over the internet? Wasn't that weird? And what did this mean about the ultimatum? Were they going to meet now?

Desperate to escape the existence of these questions, Carly grasped for the closest distraction she could find. The distraction just happened to be sneezing awkwardly at the moment. Forcing a conspiratorial smile on her lips, she said, "You know, Sam told me about your covert operation on Friday."

Germy's facial expression froze. Because he had just finished sneezing at the moment, the effect was rather hilarious. The boy's eyes were fixed in a wide state, his facial muscles pulled slightly upwards, and his mouth partially opened in an upside down U. After a moment, he smoothed out his face and asked as calmly as he could, "What covert operation?"

Carly's smile morphed into a smirk. Her weight shifting backwards along with her posture, she challenged, "The jig's up, hockey mask. I know all about your "date" with Sam."

Germy's eyes returned to their widened state. "She told you about that?"

The girl nodded steadily. "I met up with her later that night," she admitted easily as she began looking further down the hallway for an excuse to leave. The conversation wasn't going anywhere.

Carly's attention was brought fully back onto Germy when he let out, "I thought the only reason she went out with me was ... heeh KEH! ... so you and Freddie wouldn't find out."

Thing were rapidly falling out of the order Carly thought they were in. First off, Germy saw his outing with Sam on Friday as an actual date; meaning Sam probably didn't bully him into it. Carly only said probably because she had to allow room for the possibility of Germy being a masochist. Secondly, why would Sam be so desperate to hide the fact that she was spying on her that she would go on a date with someone she had titled "more repulsive than Freddie"? After a quick calculation, Carly decided that her best chance of getting the answers she wanted was to string Germy along a little longer. Again putting on the conspiratorial smile, she bluffed, "I was pretty surprised when I found out. How about you?"

Germy was grinning widely when he said, "Well obviously." He sneezed quickly before continuing, "I didn't know Sam was that handy with computers. mIRC can be too much text input for most computer users nowadays."

Carly gave a deep shoulder shrug. "You know Sam," she began with a rueful grin. "That girl is made of surprises."

"But being EngiFanatic?" asked Germy skeptically. "I didn't ... didn't ... hah CHOO! .. see that one coming." He again swiped at his nose before adding, "At all."

Carly stepped in closer, having not quite believed the words she heard come out of Germy's mouth. Her face closer to Germy's than she had ever allowed it to be before, her eyes narrowed as she asked, "Being what now?"

Against his natural instinct, Germy, led on by Carly's charisma, answered cautiously, "Being ... EngiFanatic?" From the undisguised shock that appeared on Carly's face, the boy realized that he had done a bad, bad thing. His panicking mind quickly devised that his only viable option for survival was to fake a serious illness and skip school for a week or 10.

Carly's eyes locked onto the light brown tiled floor as the pieces of the puzzle that she had slowly garnered finally fit together perfectly. The image she had had in her mind of the fifth girl again removed her mask, revealing a bored looking Sam who mouthed, "What took you so long?" What had taken her so long? She had had a strong suspicion that Sam liked Freddie for a long time, even if the girl wasn't aware of her feelings. Recently both of her friends had been frequently sleep deprived, forcing her to watch a mind-numbing amount of television. She should have realized that they were always too tired to do anything on the exact same days. Sam's mom had even told her about Sam's new computer addiction. Carly just hadn't put two and two together. Now she had, though, and there wasn't a doubt in Carly's mind that Sam was Pam.

Oh God. Sam - Pam? Did it have to be that obvious? Why hadn't she figured it out sooner? This entire time she had been coming to Sam with her problems with Freddie, and just when she was probably starting to come to terms with her own feelings for him. How badly had she hurt Sam's chances by inviting Freddie to the movies? And Sam had even encouraged her at her own expense. At least it didn't look like she had totally crushed Sam's shot with Freddie. After all, he had just gotten detention for staying up all night chatting with Sam/Pam.

The best thing she could do for Sam was to make Freddie's mind up for him. If she thought about it, everything would turn out all right for her. It wasn't like Sam was going to bar her access to Freddie if they did get together in the end. She would still be able to talk with him, laugh with him, work with him, and play with him. He just wouldn't look at her like the way he used to. Or the way he did Friday night. But ... she was getting used to it. It wouldn't hurt so badly now if she hadn't felt its warmth again on Friday. In time she wouldn't miss its presence. She hoped.

After standing silently for close to a minute, Carly suddenly walked away to mull over her thoughts in privacy. Germy barely noticed her leave, his mind already deeply involved in his fake illness planning. Did people recover from the plague?

* * *

Freddie's plans to avoid Carly for the rest of the day blew up in his face when she appeared in front of him in the obscure back corner of the library. Bouncing lightly from one foot to the next in playful strides, Carly asked with a grin, "Trying to hide from someone?"

"No," said Freddie weakly as his eyes drifted to the side. He would have to remember for the future that it was impossible to hide from your best friends.

"Look, Freddie, I'm not mad," said Carly simply as she arrived at the nearly bare table he was seated at. The girl placed her hands flatly on the table and leaned on them.

Freddie's eyes rose quickly to meet Carly's. Brow furrowing, he asked skeptically, "You're not?"

Carly directed a rueful grin downwards towards the boy. "It just kind of proves that we're supposed to just be friends, doesn't it?"

Freddie's eyes fell downwards just as quickly as a lump began to form in his throat. His brain urged him to ignore the pain in his chest. This was an easy out from his moral dilemma. A guy like him never deserved Carly anyway. He returned a weak smile towards Carly as he agreed softly, "Yeah, I guess so."

As she looked down into his eyes, those brief, intense romantic moments between the two of them flashed before her eyes. It was as though her heart was trying to forcibly warn her about what she was giving up. After all, she had already made this mistake once before. But Sam really liked Freddie; more than she ever could. She had to give her two friends the best shot at romantic happiness that she could. There would be other guys for her. He was giving her that heart-warming look, though. The one that made her feel like she was the only girl in the world that he could see. Sam surely wouldn't begrudge her one more moment. With a gentle smile on her face, she asked, "Let's just have a break-up hug, okay?"

Freddie's brow furrowed together. "A break-up hug?"

Carly nodded once. "We'll just hug once and that will be the end of it. No more thoughts of dating each other."

The pain reached a new level with Carly's words, but Freddie had a desperate need to touch the girl at that moment, so he consented, "Ah ... sure." That being said, he stood up and awkwardly extended his arms from his sides, smiling sheepishly at Carly as he did so.

With an equal level of embarrassment, Carly stepped within range of his arms, only meeting his eyes once she had done so. In such perfect synchronization that they were almost breathing in time, Carly's arms met each other across Freddie's lower back as Freddie's arms encircled the middle of Carly's back. A hug that began loosely quickly tightened up until Carly was amazed somewhere in the back of her mind over how closely they were standing. Senses melded together into synesthetic bliss, each teenager painfully aware of both the firmness and softness of the body they held against their own; the clean smell of soap, laundry detergent, and shampoo and feral one of heart-racing induced sweat; the sound of clothing rustling against clothing as they struggled together to maintain a distance closer than ever before.

A sound like a contented purr rumbled from Carly, shocking her into awareness. What was going on? This wasn't what a break-up hug was supposed to feel like, and it definitely wasn't what hugging your best friend was supposed to feel like. But it felt good. Right. That was the word. It felt like this was how hugs were supposed to be, and this was the guy she should be hugging. Her body cried out for her to cling onto him for as long as her arms could hold out, but her mind stubbornly countered with an image of Sam. For Sam's sake she somehow mustered the willpower to let go of Freddie. As she moved to step back however, she found herself still trapped within Freddie's vice-like hug.

After it became clear to the girl that Freddie did not intend to let go of her, she turned her head towards the boy as she shakily asked, "Fr ... Freddie?" As her eyes fell on the side of her face, she noticed that his eyes were closed, as though he were concentrating all of his being into the hug. She stared at the side of his face, fascinated by his stoic determination to hold on to her. He must have felt her eyes on him, for Freddie opened his eyes and turned them towards the girl. The hungry look he gave her made her realized that maybe he never intended to let go of her.

Her assessment of his expression was soon validated as he whispered, "I can't let you go Carly. Not with just a hug."

Carly felt her face flushing unbearably hot. He was doing it again. Confusing her emotions right when she thought she had the situation completely understood and under control. A sudden desire to escape this free floating, groundless sensation appeared, urging her to give in to his demands. Her tongue nervously danced over her lips. Was that what he wanted? Would that free her, or throw her farther away from her comfort zone? Carly's eyes fell on his lips. It was an ordinary looking mouth, a little on the thin side, but possessing a healthy, rosy pink glow. They looked soft, and they belonged to Freddie, and she found she wanted to press her own lips against them rather desperately. Her thoughts of Sam were conveniently pushed aside. "Just ... just one kiss and that's it," she said softly. "Then it's done, okay?"

His breath smelled like mandarin chewing gum. She was so distracted by the scent that she barely heard him say, "I don't think I can ever stop feeling this way about you, Carly." He released her from his hug, but maintained the minimal distance between them. His head then tilted downwards, and as their eyes connected a thought struck each of the teens that they were looking directly into the other person's soul. After a second that seemed to stretch for eternity, he continued, "I think I've ... loved you for too long." He added with a smirk, "The off switch is broken."

"Oh," said Carly. A kiss wouldn't solve anything. In fact, it would probably confuse the situation more. At that moment, however, her thoughts disconnected, warded away by the intensity of Freddie's stare. By her absolute certainty that this boy loved her. Driven forward only by the pulsing instinct that had spread throughout her body like a heated aura, Carly closed her eyes, tilted her head to the left and moved her lips forward ever-so-slowly.

* * *

Author's Notes: I can hear Creddie fans groaning and Seddie fans calling out for my blood. More! I feed on your emotions! Mwa ha ha ha!

Ahem. Sorry for the delay on this chapter. I warned you guys that I ran out of my original skeletal outline on the last chapter, and due to the fact that I don't know where I want this story to end, it's difficult for me to sit down a start up another one. The beginning of the story is always easiest for me. I just have to set things up. The middle gets a little harder because I have to be aware of what I've set up and try to string them along so it looks like I knocked them down on purpose. Endings are my eternal pitfall, especially on a story like this. I can see this story going either way, really, and I honestly have no bias towards either possibility. Oh well.

I had fun writing the hug, and I look forward to scripting more physical interactions in the future. Don't worry Seddie fans. Your day will come. And don't worry Creddie fans. Your time has not passed. Oh, try out this chapter title with different punctuation marks. Someone might be as pleased as I am by it. Well, probably not, but there's a chance.

This chapter was made in three pieces then melded together after I felt that one of them had reached a suitable endpoint. Because of this, there may be some confusing transitional text that I just slapped on to make it fit together. If anyone comes across anything like this, please feel free to tell me. Oh, and on that note, if you notice any errors on my writing, I would appreciate a PM with the chapter "chapter 1", general location "when Sam punch Germy", and problem "you put punched Freddie by accident". If you do want to leave it on a review, please just make sure it's an anonymous one and doesn't contain any feedback on the story so I can remove it after I've taken care of it. People have been calling my attention to such things in the reviews, but the errors got through at least two of my quick reads of the story. Some fresh pairs of eyes would definitely be a lot sharper than mine.

I never got around to that massive editing I promised in the last chapter, by the way. I'm sure I will at some point, but I'm going to have to blame my laziness and addiction to video games. Yeah, that will work. It'll get done. I really want to figure out a new way to put Germy's inter-sentence sneezes down. I have it down pretty much through onomatopoeia, which gives me total control over how it sounds, but it just looks atrocious text wise. Someday .

I honestly appreciate you reading this far into both my story and my notes. Thank you very much.

See you next chapter!

Falling Further


	7. Revelations

It had to be dangerous for his heart to pound at the speed it began beating when Carly closed her eyes and offered her lips up to him. Freddie's mind didn't linger on the thought as his head moved forward, propelled by years of pent up emotions. This was it. It was a scene he had played out in his mind more than any other. His first kiss with Carly, followed closely by an official announcement in Sam's face that they were going out. But that second part couldn't happen if Carly meant what she said earlier. Nothing would ever happen between them again. Ever.

The thought of never being able to hold Carly's hand within his own again gave him enough willpower to stop moving forward and whisper, "Do you take back what you said earlier?"

His eyes were entirely focused on her lips, allowing him to understand the barely audible, "No," that came from them. In spite of the word, Carly continued to lean forward with tightly closed eyes. Right until Freddie placed his hands on her shoulders and pushed her back slightly.

Carly's eyes opened to reveal a pensive Freddie standing before her, his troubled eyes staring deeply into her own. When she was about to ask what was wrong, he preempted her question by stating, "Then I can't. I can't stop feeling this way about you Carly." His lips turned into a small smirk as he confided, "I've already tried and failed."

They stood in completely awkward silence; with the boy's hands resting gingerly on the girl's shoulders and with their nearly connected lips merely a few breaths apart. Their thoughts made up for the teens' lack of movement. The boy berated himself for not taking advantage of the situation and stealing a kiss from lips he did not deserve, while he girl was held in a confused stasis by the battle between her cool head and her suddenly passionate heart. Freddie couldn't believe how completely his old feelings had returned. It felt like every second he spent with Carly was a step ... no a giant leap towards how he used to feel about the girl. Carly couldn't believe that even though she knew that Freddie and Sam would be a better match in the end, she still wanted to take possession of his lips with her own.

After an intense minute of inhaling each other's breaths, Freddie managed to collect his thoughts to the point where he could speak. Maintaining his visual connection with Carly, he asked softly, "So now what?"

Carly spent a moment trying to gather her thoughts, which she found extremely difficult to do with her field of vision trapped within Freddie's eyes. Eventually the flash of heat passed, however, leaving Carly's consciousness with only one set of thoughts that she was forced to take for truth. Even if somewhere inside of her she didn't believe that they were. After taking a deep breath, she stated unevenly at first, "I'm … giving you my blessing to go after … Pam, EngiFanatic, whatever you want to call her, at full force." She seemed to regain more and more of her composure with each word, so the pace of her words was rock solid as she finished, "I'll be okay on my own, Freddie."

A small frown formed on the bottom of Freddie's face. "I know you'll be okay, Carly," said Freddie with the calmness of absolute belief. "I'm just not so sure about myself."

Carly's eyebrows knitted together. "What do you mean?"

Freddie took a small step forward, cutting the distance between the two teenagers in half. "I meant every word I said back there, Carly," he uttered with feverish urgency. He felt like his chance with Carly was again slipping through his fingers. "Every action I took, or almost took, is something I've ached to do for years. For what's felt like my entire life."

The brunette teenager took a deep breath to try and steady her awakening heart. It helped slightly, and she found her words didn't quiver as much as she thought they would as she argued, "Well now you've done them." Carly's head tilted to the right as a small, apologetic smile formed on her lips. "Let's move on, Freddie."

"I just can't," fired back the boy immediately, his hands adding expression to his statement by raising up to his torso and opening in exasperation. "That taste didn't satiate my hunger. It just whet my appetite."

The girl's body maintained its position along with her mind. "I told you the terms before the hug."

"Well I never agreed to those terms," stated Freddie resolutely.

Carly's arms folded across her chest, her smile twisting into a smirk. "You definitely said you agreed, Freddie."

"Not here," said the boy as his right hand covered the area on his left chest that his heart resided underneath.

The girl was losing the argument, and she knew it. After chewing on her bottom lip for a moment, she asked, "Well then what about Pam?"

Freddie's emotions took a stunned tumble as Carly brought up the other girl who had taken control over them lately. When in the presence of Carly, actually inches away from kissing the girl, he found his feelings for the girl numbed to insignificance. Maybe it was only because of the heat of the moments before, but he was able to say with some semblance of conviction, "I'll put an end to it."

Carly hadn't been expecting him to say it so convincingly. While it wasn't something she planned, she guiltily found from the warm feeling inside of her that it was something she wanted. Ignoring that feeling, she asked, "Just like that?"

"Just ..." The power of the moments before waned with each second away from nearly pressing his lips against Carly's. His feelings for the girl who had saved him from depression were quickly returning to normal levels and the teenager suddenly averted his eyes from Carly's for the first time in what felt like an eternity as he provisioned, "Well, I'll have to let her down gently at least."

The warm feeling within Carly's chest was quickly engulfed by a sharp twist of pain. But this was good, her mind told her. This was what she thought she wanted. Carly's head tilted downwards empathetically. "That's the problem, Freddie. You have feelings for this girl."

Freddie's eyes found their way back to Carly's. "They're not nearly as strong as my feelings for you, Carly."

The girl gave a slight shrug of her shoulders. "They could grow to get there." The small smile again formed on her lips, forced there by the content of her message rather than her inner feelings. "I want you to give it a full chance, and you can't do that with me waiting on the side."

Freddie's eyes narrowed skeptically at Carly. "Why is it so important to you that I do this?"

Carly's breath caught in her throat as her thoughts collided together. How much should she tell him? How much should she lie? How much of it was a lie to herself?

"Carly?" Freddie prodded gently after an extended pause from the girl.

"Freddie," she started, regurgitating the first thing that came to her mind, "I don't think I love you the way you love me."

A small tightening of his lips was his only response to Carly's words. "I know that, Carly. And really, I think I can live with it as long as you want to be with me."

The girl shook her head, with a small, sad smile occupying her lips. "I'm not okay with it, Freddie. You deserve that feeling of warmth," she closed her eyes, both identifying and savoring the emotions his adoring gaze were eliciting in her. "of completion when you utterly know that someone loves you."

When she opened her eyes again, she found his face had cut a great deal of the distance between them, forcing her to look into his lucid, brown eyes. "As long as I can give those feelings to you, Carly, I don't care about having them for myself." The right corner of his mouth turned up slightly as he added, "That's the benefit of, well, loving someone utterly."

Carly tried to move backwards and break herself from the enthralling effect his eyes were having on her. "You say that because you don't know what its like, Freddie."

Freddie followed her closely, nullifying her efforts. "I say it, Carly, because I mean it."

Because they were best friends and Freddie wasn't what Carly would consider a practiced liar, it would be impossible for him to successfully lie to her from their current distance. And so the girl found herself believing his words with a fierce intensity that was having a weakening effect on her knees. The distance between the two teenagers was again closing, and Carly's eyes finally moved from Freddie's eyes. To his lips.

Freddie was just beginning to feel the heat radiating from Carly's face on his own when the girl shut her eyes tightly and averted her face to her right. "Carly?" he questioned concernedly.

"I'm .. I'm sorry Freddie," she said with a strengthening voice. She took a big step back, and was slightly surprised to feel the end of a bookshelf against her back. Carly opened her eyes, and found herself looking into her friend's blank expression from a distance. Freddie hadn't followed her retreat that time. "I've made up my mind."

He stood there passively, his hands hanging loosely at his sides. The boy wanted to tell her that she'd made up her mind before, but deduced from the flow of the conversation and her recently adopted retreating tactic that his words would only unnecessarily prolong the conversation. He couldn't think of a proper response, his consciousness now reeling from his monumental idiocy at not immediately taking advantage of his chance to kiss Carly. It appeared as though the girl had expected him to protest more, however, because she stood before him in silence; searching his face intently. After analyzing his blank expression fully, taking special pains to not focus on his lips, Carly gave Freddie a tight nod before turning around and walking away.

Freddie maintained his petrified position as he searched his thoughts for the implications of what had just happened. Based on the content of her message, he had to conclude that she had just rejected him for the second time. He found this rejection didn't affect him nearly as badly for a couple of reasons. The first was that this had happened before and had actually led to their first date. The second was that he had been inches away from kissing her. But what had stopped him? It definitely couldn't just be his excuse of not accepting her terms. He had very little kissing experience, but he knew that after what they had been seconds away from completing it would have been nearly impossible for them to go back to just being friends. That kiss would have been the first step towards a romantic relationship. Why had he put a stop to it himself?

Words appeared in his head, but they were not spoken in any voice. They were spelled out in size 10, courier new text.

"you're an idiot."

* * *

There was something off about Freddie this evening. Sam could tell that she had most, if not all, of his attention by the speed of his responses, but his answers were unusually terse, and his normally probing questions extremely superficial. Based on her months of experience chatting with Freddie, it felt as though he was holding something back. After waiting patiently for him to come out with whatever he wanted to say, Sam took the route most familiar to her. With no conversational prompting whatsoever, she suddenly asked, "is something wrong?"

After a longer pause than she expected, Freddie typed, "Oh man. Are you telling me you can read my mind too?"

Sam scrunched her face up towards the screen. "What are you talking about?"

Her question was rewarded by another extended pause. Not for the first time, Sam wished she knew exactly what Freddie was thinking.

* * *

"The other day you mentioned the name of my date without ..." he began to type. He quickly slammed his pinky on the backspace key, aborting the message.

"We need to meet or I'm afraid this is going to end." Again his finger found the backspace key.

With a heavy sigh Freddie allowed his head to fall to the desk where it impacted against the hard wood surface with a soft thud. It had been weeks since the library incident and Carly had shown no signs of budging from her terms for the break-up hug. Even though they had been inches away from kissing.

Suddenly, like every time he thought about that moment, his stomach twisted up with anger towards himself. He had to be at the very least legally retarded. That was the only plausible explanation he could come up with. He had always believed that he had no chance with Carly, but in that one moment his brain tricked him into believing otherwise. From the looks of things, it was a mistake he was going to regret for the rest of his life.

So with Carly out of the picture, all he had left was Pam. But how was he supposed to "go after her full force" like Carly had commanded him to? What if she rejected him and he was left entirely alone? Sure their late night chats were never going to go anywhere, but at least they were going to continue. He felt that he could survive on that indefinitely, and so once again he let the matter go for yet another night. Or at least he thought he had.

* * *

Carly flipped over in her bed so that she was watching the television from her stomach. Watching wasn't really an accurate word, however. Her eyes were indeed following the moving images, but her mind couldn't possibly be further away from what she was seeing. After all, chances were her friends were chatting. And that was it. Just chatting. Always chatting and never anything more.

She had imagined that once she removed herself from the game her two friends would quickly gravitate towards each other, but they were proving to be extremely stubborn. She should have guessed that this was going to happen. Still, if she could just progress them past this floundering stage, they could go far together as a couple. "And possibly leave me behind," she said to herself quietly. The girl rapidly abandoned that thought. She needed her friends to get together quickly for a very simple reason. Lately, Carly couldn't seem to stop thinking about Freddie.

Whether she was with him or not, whenever she had a free moment to herself he occupied her thoughts. Or rather their brief encounter in the library occupied her thoughts. Entangled in the most intense hug of her life, they had been incredibly close to engaging in a kiss that would have rendered everything else she had experienced laughably inconsequential. It was a mania that lurked in her conscious moments, and she couldn't think of any way to stop it short of getting her friends together. Or completing the kiss.

Carly forced the latter option out of her mind. It would only make things worse. At least now she only imagined what the kiss would have been like. If they actually went through with it and it was even half of what she imagined it to be, then there was no way that she would be able to walk away with just that one taste of his lips.

In any case, she had already made that decision by burning that bridge for the second time. There was no way that Freddie would open up his heart for a third beating. He was too smart for that. Her best chance at escape was helping Freddie and Sam properly get together. Hopefully her happiness for her friends would numb the feelings of regret and longing within her. As it stood, it was becoming increasingly difficult for Carly to hide her feelings from Freddie. Only by tattered shreds of willpower was she able to stop herself from gazing at his profile when he looked away. She had to use the rest of it to stop herself from sneaking forward and taking a second chance at a first kiss.

As her heart began to beat quicker at the mere thought of the kiss, Carly berated herself for again losing her thoughts to feelings that simply hadn't existed a few months ago. In these rare moments of immediate introspection, she always shamefully felt that she was acting like a kindergarten student who was being threatened with having a neglected toy taken away. Did she really care about Freddie, or just her possession of him?

Either way, her best option was still to get her two best friends together. She had found that that was as far as she could stand to plan comfortably, however. When she had allowed her thoughts to stray farther into the proposed relationship, her heart had protested with palpable pain. She didn't know how she was going to handle seeing them together, watching the hand that had shyly grasped her own entwined within Sam's, or witnessing the lips that had plagued her thoughts pressed against those of her best friend, but she couldn't worry about that now. The quicker she could put this plan into action, the quicker she could forget about Freddie and the heat that had scalded her body when she felt his breath on her face.

From the looks of things, though, her friends weren't going to be offering her any such relief any time soon. After all, it had been weeks since the library incident with no change in the status quo. They both seemed perfectly content to allow things to remain "anonymous". Unfortunately for them, Carly suddenly decided that she wasn't.

It was eventually her pillow which sent her running down the stairs to check on what Spencer was doing. She had been unconsciously hugging the soft object against her chest. When she became aware of what she had been doing, her memory surged with knee weakening intensity. After recovering from the sensation, she realized that something had to be done. Immediately.

* * *

Spencer traced the wire from the statue to the power supply and back again with his right pointer finger, giving out tiny, "Hmm"s every few feet for good measure. Everything seemed okay according to the diagram in the book he had purchased titled, "Mechanics for artists: Making truly moving pieces of art". Well, almost okay. His set-up seemed to have inverted from the diagram somehow.

He was about to take a second look at the diagram when Carly charged down the stairs. Once she spotted her brother staring down at a book laid open on the kitchen counter, she called out, "Busy Spencer?"

Spencer looked up immediately and aimed a pleased smile at his sister. "You're just in time for the unveiling of my newest sculpture!"

"Really?" asked Carly, her eyes moving to the sculpture standing a few feet in front of the elevator. It looked like a typical Spencer statue: an unpainted mass of gray clay shaped into a featureless humanoid with legs spread shoulder-length apart, left hand held above its almost cuboid head and right arm extended fully at shoulder level. There was something going on in the middle section of the statue, as it appeared to be disconnected from the torso and legs. "It looks … nice," commented Carly with a shrug of her shoulders.

"Reserve your opinion until you've seen the best part!" commanded Spencer. He turned towards the counter to grab the book and wave it in Carly's direction. "I just bought this really cool book about animating sculptures."

Carly took a good look at the book before asking, "You know that book's upside down, right Spencer?"

Spencer blinked once, turning the book around to find that it was indeed upside down. After turning it around again to look at the diagram, he laughed, "So that's why everything looked inverted!"

"Umm, Spencer?" began Carly as she took a quick look around the room. "Just how long have the plans looked inverted?"

Spencer shrugged and gave a smiling, "I dunno." He witnessed Carly take a big step backwards before he could ask, "Are you ready for its inaugural run?"

Carly took another big step backwards.

"Carly?"

One more big step put the couch between herself and the sculpture. After ducking to cover her body up to her neck, she yelled out, "All set!"

"Then let it begin!" shouted Spencer as he began to dance around an object that appeared to be a car battery. After a weak mimicry of Riverdance, his arms performed a whirling flourish above his head before his right finger dropped down to press a red button on top of the battery.

A faint buzzing sound filled the room, prompting Carly to peek above the couch to witness the statue's mid section gyrating in a steady figure eight pattern. A congratulatory grin appeared on the girl's face. "Wow. It actually looks like it's working."

Spencer's eyes remained glued on the kinetically infused clay. "Was there ever any doubt?" he gleefully called over his shoulder.

Carly kept her true answer to herself as she began to approach Spencer's latest success. They were far and few between, so Carly had learned that it was necessary to savor them to their fullest. She noticed something off about the statue as she moved towards it, but couldn't quite put her finger on what it was. Tilting her head to get a different view of the statue, she asked, "What do you call it?"

"Jalapeña!" he exclaimed without missing a beat. "She's got spicy Latina flavor!"

"Oh," she said, her imagination filling in the rest of the missing features from the statue. As she again focused on the part of the statue that she now identified as its hips, Carly suddenly realized what had seemed so off about the sculpture. The gyration seemed to be speeding up. "Hey Spencer, is she supposed to get faster as she goes along?"

Spencer turned an impressed smile on his sister. "It's funny that you mentioned that, Carly. This book," he paused to brandish the book in the air, right side up, "actually warns that if you don't limit the current with a proper setup of resistors the machine will accelerate to the point of … going boom!" His fingers curled up together then expanded apart to offer Carly emphasis on the boom.

Carly turned her head towards her brother. Her eyes narrowing suspiciously, she asked, "And you have these resistors right?"

"Of course! It's always safety first with me!" He ignored the sudden eye rolling of his sister. Teenage girls were always so doubtful. "Look, I went to the store and picked it up this afternoon, see?" He fished around in his right pant pocket and removed a wiry, copper metal object.

Carly took a big step backwards. "You bought more than one, didn't you?"

Spencer shook his head. "That would have been a waste of money. I mean, these things are cheap, but every penny counts, right?"

"Then what is in there?" the teenager questioned as she took another step towards cover.

Spencer shot the girl a puzzled look. "Well obviously this," said the guardian, waving the resistor in the girl's direction. Seeing the object out of the corner of his eye, he realized his mistake with a soft, "Oh."

A quick peek at the statue elicited an "Eep!" from Carly, and she spun around and immediately dove the rest of the way behind the couch.

Spencer rose an eyebrow in his sister's diving direction before turning towards the statue and seeing what all the fuss was about. The sculpture's hips were now moving at a pace that would probably make the world's fastest hula dancer jealous and render a human woman infertile. The hips had been forced out of their normal rotation, the movement now appearing awkwardly chaotic, like a drunkard dancing at hyper speed. "It's a Latin Explosion!" yelled Spencer as he dropped to the floor and curled into a fetal position. Just before he tucked his head into his arms, he added, "And not the good kind!"

A heavy, high-pitched screech whirled through the room, rebounding against the walls and heralding the arrival of a thick, booming explosion that sent pieces of gray clay flying everywhere.

After opening and closing her jaw to coax the ringing sound out of her ears, Carly's head cautiously moved over the top of the couch. As her eyes jumped from one clay covered object to the next, she called out, "Are you okay, Spencer?"

Upon hearing his name, the young adult popped up from his curled position. His mouth and eyes opened to maximum limits and his arms opened wide as he excitedly, boomingly asked, "How cool was that!?"

Carly had to stifle a laugh at her brother whose defensive position had only protected exactly half of his body from the explosion. The other half was entirely covered in grayish white clay, making him look like a comic book villain who was half man and half unfinished sculpture. To aid her attempts to not break into laughter, she forced her eyes onto the statue. The now "fleshless" hips were composed of a metallic hoop that extended out from a metal bar that connected the top and bottom halves of the sculpture. "It looks like Jalapeña has had it, Spencer."

"Jalapeña? Schmalapeña!" dismissed Spencer with a flick of his wrist. "I'm reloading and rechristening this baby T.L.E.!"

Carly furrowed her brow and mouthed the letters to herself as the tried to find words that fit the anagram. Once she had, she groaned immediately. Looking doubtfully at her brother, she guessed, "The Latina Explosion?

"Exactly!" answered Spencer with a widening grin. He immediately moved to make good on his reloading claim.

Carly cried out just as suddenly, "Not in this house you aren't!"

Spencer froze in his tracks. "You're so right, Carly," he said after chewing the matter over for a moment. "This deserves to be shared with the world!"

The girl was forced to lunge and grab her brother's elbow to prevent his forward momentum. When he turned to ask her what she needed she asked, "Before you go around 'spreading' your artistic vision, can you drive me to Sam's really quick?"

"Er," stalled Spencer as he stole a peek at a nearby wall clock. It was 8:00 pm on a Friday night. That was permissible by his standards. Spencer nodded his approval. "I'll just clean this up when I get back," he promised as he moved to grab his keys from the kitchen counter. When he finally found his keys and began moving towards the elevator down he noticed Carly slipping out through the front door.

* * *

The battle theme of Starcruiser Odysseus was blasting through Freddie's headphones as he chatted with EngiFanatic, meaning that the only way he could identify the girl sneaking up on him was through olfactory means. Because the girl sneaking up on him was Carly, it was truly all he needed. The instant a faint tendril of scent hit his nose he simultaneously did a spinning launch out of his seat, pulled his headphones down to rest on the back of his neck, and asked with wide open eyes, "What are you doing here, Carly?"

The brunette girl sauntered up to him, looking impossibly cute in her dark blue sweatpants and black t-shirt with a small outline of a pink flower stretching across her torso. These were her sleeping clothes, after all. "I don't really know," she answered as her eyes pierced into his own. "Actually, scratch that," she corrected, shaking her head with a sad smile. "I think I'm going to make your dream come true."

Freddie's heart, which had slowly been amping up since he sensed her presence, suddenly maxed out. Since that day at the library one image had dominated his dreams. He anxiously licked his lips, and cursed himself for not brushing his teeth directly after dinner. His eyes became so fixated on Carly's lips that he did not notice the scarf she had been holding in her right hand until she rose it up to place it against his eyes. "Whoa, Carly. What's going on?" he questioned as she began to wrap the scarf around his head, blinding his vision.

"Please just trust me," he heard her lips say softly from a distance close to his right ear as she moved past him to type something on his keyboard. He complied without a word of protest from then on, moving forward as he felt her hands pressing him from his back.

"Where are you two going?" he heard his mother ask as they crossed what must have been his living room.

"It's a surprise, Mrs. Benson," said Carly lightly. "I'll have him back before too late, I promise."

"Well, as long as he's with you, Carly," caved his mother with the flustered tone she always adopted whenever Carly was smiling at her. The girl's control over him had to be genetic.

After a few more feet Spencer's voice greeted, "Hey Freddie! You're coming to," Spencer's sentence was interrupted by a loud thumping sound followed by a yelp of pain from Spencer. A quick, whispered conversation ensued and Freddie soon felt Carly's hands on his back again, moving him into what had to be the elevator next to their kitchen.

Freddie knew he should be putting more thought into what Carly thought his dream was, but instead found himself focusing on the feel of Carly's hands on his back. He was entirely under her control, and he found he didn't mind. He actually kind of liked it. He was only allowed to experience the panic of possibly being an S&M fetishist for a few moments before Carly interrupted his thoughts by pressing a hand on the top of his head as she directed him into what was probably, based on the smell, Spencer's car.

As the car began to move forward, Freddie again found himself focusing on whatever he could notice of the girl riding next to him. Her sweet, signature scent. The feel of her right arm brushing against his left every time the car took a sharp turn. The sound of her breathing; both steady and purposeful. Where he was going did not matter to him. What mattered was that Carly was taking him there.

* * *

The doorbell rang, but Sam paid no attention to it. As long as she stayed in the dining room she wouldn't have to see her mother's dates and they wouldn't have to see her, and that was one arrangement that the perpetually fighting mother and daughter emphatically agreed upon. Instead, Sam continued to scan the screen for Freddie's message of "I'm back!". She really wasn't expecting him back anytime soon, though. He had typed in "I need to go AFK to help my mother," about 15 minutes ago. One time it had taken him close to an hour to return after typing that in.

It wasn't until the footsteps stopped a few feet behind her back that she turned around to shoot a glare at her mother. Only her mother and her date weren't who were standing there. Instead Carly stood beside a blindfolded Freddie. There was something in the brunette girl's eyes, a sad tint of apology that warned Sam that Carly knew her secret and about what she was going to do next. Sam immediately jumped up from her seat, her face contorting in panic as she mouthed desperately, "Please don't, Carly! Please!"

Carly's eyes never wavered from Sam's. After a moment, a smile that matched her eyes formed on her mouth. This was a necessary step for all of their good. "Freddie," she began, her left fingers gingerly curling underneath the front of the scarf, "Meet EngiFanatic."

* * *

Author's Notes: This was my first chapter under 6k words since I warned you guys that I wouldn't be holding back. There's a simple explanation for this: this was what I consider a set-up chapter, and I don't really like writing them. I'm glad I got to play with Spencer some more, though. I like writing wacky characters. Anyway, nothing really happened, or was resolved. Chapters like this are necessary to properly frame the big scenes though, so here it is. I don't think it's going to be high on anyone's list of favorite chapters, but that's okay. Like I said, it's a set-up chapter. Now we can all look forward to the next one!

Speaking of that next one, please don't expect it out any time soon. I have too many possible options to go with from here, and anything I choose is going to severely effect how the rest of the story turns out. Because of this, I'm going to have to do some major planning so that I don't end up with a story that makes sense but that I don't want to write. I like to avoid rewriting chapters that don't fit because they could confuse some loyal fans who aren't going back to re-read them and because I'm just lazy in general.

And that's all I have to say for now! Thanks for reading, and see you next time!

Falling Further


	8. The altered playing field

For a brief moment in time, Sam seriously considered running down the hallway, jumping out of the window, and fleeing down the fire escape. After all, Freddie had never been to her home before, and it had always been pitifully easy to fool the boy. There was really no point in hiding if Carly knew the truth, though, because no amount of her own brilliantly conceived and expertly delivered lies would convince Freddie that Carly was lying. There was only one option available to the blond girl, and she knew it. She remained perfectly still, her eyes focused on Freddie's face as she awaited his judgment.

Her judge had precious little time to react to the news that EngiFanatic's physical appearance was about to be revealed, but rather than immediately turn to reality, Freddie's mind quickly flashed images of what he had imagined Pam would look like. The faces appeared and faded away in quick succession: a beautiful, smiling teenage girl, a cute, frowning gothic chick, a female version of himself, a male version of himself, a frowning, gothic Germy, a maniacally cackling Neville. He experienced a tremor of fear as the images took a turn for the worse, but recovered as he realized that he would finally be putting a face with the name of the girl who could be his soul mate.

As if on cue, Carly removed his blindfold. Freddie's eyes quickly scanned the room that was revealed for him. He saw an archaic computer sitting atop a bulky, aged mahogany desk, a plain wall clock indicating that it was around 8:15, Sam staring at him expectantly, and a calender that was decorated with the image of a tropical beach. After turning around to look at the rest of the average dining room, he asked, "Where is she?"

Sighing, Carly grabbed Freddie's head with both of her hands and forced his face in Sam's direction. As his eyes fell on the blond girl, a blush exploded over her face. She saved herself from the fate of a melted face by averting her gaze.

When Carly finally removed her hands from his head, he turned back towards the brunette girl as he asked in humored disbelief, "Wait, Sam?" Carly gave the boy one solemn nod, prompting him to ask, "This is a joke, right?"

Carly gave Freddie a small smile. "You should ask her yourself," she said. When the boy's face angled towards Sam, Carly spun around and began to walk out of the room.

"Where are you going, Carly?" Freddie asked immediately, his body instinctively moving to follow her and escape his uncomfortable situation.

The brunette turned her head over her shoulder and said simply, "Home."

Still not allowing his mind to grasp the reality of the situation, he took a few steps in her direction, questioning hopefully, "Aren't you my ride home?"

Carly shook her head then turned around so that she was facing him. After stopping Freddie dead in his tracks with a bemused look, she continued to backpedal as she suggested warmly with her words and her eyes directed towards both of her friends, "You two should just pretend that you're still in the chatroom." Her fingers danced over an imaginary keyboard for a few moments before she turned around again, and called out over her shoulder, "Just use your voices instead of your fingers. It's easier, I promise."

Both Sam and Freddie gave Carly their full attention, each praying fiercely that their friend would change her mind, turn around and stay with them through the upcoming conversation. That she would mediate them like she always seemed to do whenever they were at their most passionate. Unlike all of those other times, however, their eyes watched her leave the room, and their ears heard the front door close behind her. They were entirely alone, and they were utterly aware of it.

The awkward silence was only intensified by an uncomfortable heat that was beginning to rise in each of the teenagers' bodies. The embarrassment of sharing his deepest thoughts with his most active criticizer belonged to Freddie, while Sam endured the burning shame of being caught red-handed in the biggest lie of her lifetime. Neither of the two had the courage to look each other in the eye, but Freddie eventually collected enough of his thoughts together to ask, "Is it true?"

Sam had two options: to own up to the truth, or to deny everything. Her natural inclination was to go with the second option, but she had already ruled out the impracticality of maintaining that particular lie. She could only tell the truth, and so with a softer voice than she could ever remember hearing come out of her mouth, she admitted, "Yes." The word was concise, simple, and evoked a wonderful, warm feeling. She no longer had to hide what she had been doing, what she had been enjoying, for months. She could let it out, and the release of removing the curtain of deceit was intoxicating. Based on that moment, she decided to answer all of his answers truthfully regardless of the consequences.

Freddie had been expecting to hear a denial regardless of what the truth was, so when she confessed it was a stunning blow. He immediately tried to merge his memories of Sam with his memories of Pam, but couldn't quite pull it off. There were too many incongruities. How could this girl who caused so much strife in his life save him from the brink of depression? How could the girl who he had been baring his soul to every night be the same one who was always on the lookout for, and quick to capitalize on, opportunities to cause him bodily harm? He needed some questions answered to solve this puzzle, beginning with, "You knew it was me from the start?"

The embarrassment closed up her throat, allowing her only to answer with a nod. The feeling the nod evoked was just as powerful as her verbal answer, however. She closed her eyes to concentrate on the feeling and to force her beating heart to slow as she awaited his next question.

The sound of moving furniture forced her to open her eyes again, and she found Freddie turning one of the dining room table chairs around to face her. After sitting down in the chair, he put both of his elbows on his knees leaning his body and his face towards her. Once his eyes found hers looking into his own, he asked simply, "Why?"

She felt her recently decelerated heart begin to race again as his eyes searched hers for an answer. He didn't look angry or hurt; just confused and maybe even a little accepting. She turned the dining room chair that functioned as a computer chair around and sat down in a more erect position than his, her arms crossing against her chest. After collecting her thoughts, she finally answered, "It started out as a prank." His eyes remained unchanging, so she continued, "I was supposed to … I dunno … lure you into some chats then use the information I gained to make fun of you."

Freddie nodded as everything she had shared up until that point seemed to make sense. "It actually sounds kind of unimaginative for one of your plans," commented the boy as he thought about it further.

Sam gave the teenager sitting across from her a direct look. "This happened right after Carly's 'rejection'," she argued. With a facsimile of her normal, haughty smirk on her face, she finished, "You would have been devastated."

After a second of reflection he nodded his agreement. He wouldn't have recovered from something like that any time soon. "Yeah, you're right. So what happened? It's been months since then."

She had made the commitment to tell the truth, but this answer was too embarrassing for Sam to just let out. The words caught in her throat as she looked into his eyes, so she found herself looking away as she slowly answered, "I started to like it."

Freddie's face began to burn as hotly as Sam's as he let out a barely audible, "Oh." His mind began to turn rapidly. Pam was Sam. He attempted to martial his mental powers to disprove the fact laid before him, but the clues led him in the opposite direction. Pam had always been abnormally aggressive and blunt for a girl. But he had attributed that to the freeing nature of Internet anonymity, not to the fact that Sam was incapable of defense or subtlety. Pam had also tended to focus on the battle aspects of the show. It had been something he had viewed as an interesting aspect in a girl, not something he could have attributed to Sam's feral tendencies. Pam being Sam also explained how she had known Carly's name. And then there was the obvious closeness of the two names.

Sam sat in silent observance of Freddie as he looked into the distance, or rather into his thoughts. His arms were pulled tightly across his chest, his right leg was shaking up and down, and his eyes were racing from position to position. His mouth remained tightly closed. She wished he would just ask her more questions. Every answer she gave was like a weight off of her chest that she hadn't been aware of. They seemed to make every breath more free and sweet. Meanwhile sitting in silence was having the opposite effect; each second piling up on her shoulders with lung oppressive anxiety.

Freddie's leg and eyes finally ceased their movement, and the teenage boy answered her silent plea by asking, "How much of it was a lie?"

Sam bit her lip and began to examine her memory of their conversations. "My name," she said quickly. After slightly longer, she added, "That I didn't know you." There was another long pause, followed by a surprised blink.

As if giving voice to her thoughts, Freddie asked skeptically, "That's it?"

Sam aimed a helpless half-smile towards the boy then answered his question with a deep shrug.

Freddie gave the girl a surprised blink of his own. For a moment, she had actually appeared cute. Trying to avoid the thought, he shakily continued, "Wh, what about the other stuff?"

"Like?" she questioned, tilting her head slightly to the right.

He had a sinking feeling that that she was luring him into a trap with all of her cute actions, and he was falling for every one of them. It was quietly countered by the realization that he didn't care. He had passed the point of no return in more than one sense, it seemed. Forcing his mind to focus on the questions he had worked out during his last silent break, he continued "Do you really like Starcruiser Odysseus?"

"I watched every episode of the show before I entered that chatroom," she recalled easily. "I think I started liking it by the second one."

Freddie grinned and shook his head from side to side. "Lemme guess. When Captain Rose entered the fray in her battlesuit?"

"We probably talked about this before, huh?" asked Sam with a matching grin.

"Er, yeah," said Freddie, suddenly aware of his grin as he saw it mirrored on Sam's face. Forcing his lips back into neutrality, he questioned, "Do you like to go to the park and lie around for hours?"

Sam leaned backwards in surprise. "You really remember everything, don't you?"

"Answer the question," commanded Freddie teasingly. He realized the quality of his words immediately after they left his mouth and tensed up reflexively. His words would have been appropriate banter for his chats with Pam, but they would have earned him a glare and possibly a smack from Sam.

Sam seemed to be in Pam mode, however, because she nodded and claimed, "I have the grass stains to prove it. Should I grab my dirty laundry?"

"That won't be necessary," said Freddie, startled at the articles of used clothing that his mind immediately focused on. Damn his teenage hormones. His immediate thoughts were again kicked to the side. He had to focus or he was never going to get a proper handle on the situation. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat as he realized his next question was embarrassing just to think about, but it had to be asked. Looking off to the side, he asked with tentative slowness, "Are you really happier typing to me than talking to any guy in school?"

Sam's breath caught in her throat. Damn his memory to hell. She had typed that one time during his first attempt to meet her face to face. He had just told her he was starting to like her, and his admission had made her feel so good that she had eventually responded with that statement. Of course he had asked moments later if they could meet in person and she had begun her practice of disconnecting in panic. Sam realized suddenly that she could use the very plausible lie that she had been trying to prevent him from asking them to meet face to face, but she recognized just as abruptly that she didn't want to. She waited until she found his eyes with her own and kept them in sight despite her burning cheeks and pounding heart. Unsmiling lips opened and answered steadily, "Yes."

The teenage boy's brain warned him that Sam was an experienced liar, but another unidentified part of him urged him to believe her. It pointed to the blush that had blossomed over her fair complexion, the fact that she was maintaining constant eye contact with him, and the almost soft quality of her gaze. For the second time, Freddie admitted to himself that she almost looked cute. Did two "almost"s make a "definitely"? What the hell was he thinking? He forced his eyes away from Sam as he felt his concentration break.

As soon as he began looking away from her, Sam felt her posture slacken. Her arms unfolded and her hands met and began to fidget in her lap. She wanted to move closer to him for some reason. She felt like it would feel more natural to talk to him face to face, without the distance. Maybe so that their words could mingle as closely as they had done for months on the computer screens. She didn't want to be the first one to make that move, however, so she remained still and kept her eyes expectantly on the boy across from her.

The boy began to restructure his thoughts around the fact that Sam was Pam. The images he had had of his late-night partner faded away, replaced by the possibility he hadn't fathomed; by the reality that had been thrown in front of his face. Maybe the reason he had become familiar with Pam so quickly was because he already knew how to handle her. He knew how she thought and how she would react because of his experience with her true persona. The more he thought about it, the more the fact fit with his memories. He abandoned his thoughts and took another good look at Sam. Esthetically it could definitely have been a lot worse. Actually, he admitted to himself, it couldn't have been much better. He would never admit it out loud, but he had always considered Sam cute. He had been prepared to truthfully brag in college that his first kiss had been with one of the cutest girls he knew. What was stopping him from actually pursuing a relationship with this girl, who the universe seemed to be thrusting onto him? Well, aside from the bodily harm that she frequently inflicted upon him, the only thing standing in his way were his feelings for a girl who had rejected him twice. A girl who, along with the universe, had been shoving him in this direction for weeks. Maybe it was about time he took her advice.

Sam had already been on heated edge when the drifting gaze of Freddie began to again look at her. After he stood up, she almost jumped out of her seat. She still couldn't quite look him in the eye since her last admission, but her peripheral vision was entirely focused on the him as he began to move in her general direction. Before he had stopped moving towards her, she demanded, "What are you doing?"

"Something I've wanted to do for a while now," Freddie answered as he knelt down in front of Sam. The girl found his eyes directly in line with her own as he asked with a small smile, "Do you want to go get something to eat, EngiFanatic?"

Her blush magnified due to the dual threat of him looking in her eyes and asking her out to eat. What gave him the right to make her feel like this? She would be furious with him if she just weren't so flustered. She glanced at the clock and stated defensively, "It's almost 9 o'clock."

Freddie's shoulders rose and fell in a nonchalant shrug. "It's Friday night. We'll find someplace," he assured her.

There seemed to be no escaping his eyes, and so Sam finally succumbed to the force and focused on his brown orbs. Why did it feel like something was melting inside of her every time their eyes locked onto each other? As a master of the bluff, she recognized no hint of deception, only a clear intent to take her out. To spend some time with her. Without the chance of Carly being nearby.

The last thought, which seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, affected her the most, and she realized that she wanted those same things so badly that she wouldn't even care if they didn't eat. She couldn't let him know that, however, because he was Freddie and she was stubborn, so Sam averted her eyes to hide her raw desire and said as nonchalantly as she could, "Er, sure. Let me go tell my mom."

The teenagers' attention was ripped away from each other as a dominant voice called out, "You mean let me ask my mom for permission." Sam's mother stepped into the door frame leading into the living room, then shifted her weight onto her right foot with a smirk dancing on her lips when she caught sight of the boy kneeling before her daughter. "Really, kid? Asking her to marry you this early in the game?"

Her words jabbed the two teens like a heated poker jabbed into an exposed area, and they were both jumped to their feet instantaneously. Freddie's hands flailed in the air embarrassedly while he defensively babbled, "Uh, that's not what I was doing Missus … Miss … Pu … Puckett."

The woman stepped forward a bit, tilting her head to the left as she did so. Her eyes analyzed him from top to bottom with a thoroughness that made Sam blush. "So you're the guy who's been making my Sam lose sleep?"

Freddie felt as though she were draining his health through her eyes, and he would have sworn on a holy bible that his face was on fire and that his throat was nearly closed. After attempting to dismiss the feelings with a physical gulp, he weakly answered, "I guess?" When Sam's mother reacted to his answer with a narrowing of her eyes he automatically yielded, "I'm sorry."

"We'll see," said the woman evenly. Her right hand rose and indicated with a curling of her slender, pointer finger that he should follow her.

Freddie's head turned towards Sam, desperate for a lifeline. He recognized from years of fighting with Sam that he was up against a vastly superior opponent. Sam deeply shrugged her shoulders, demonstrating her own confusion with the whole situation. Her mother had never demonstrated any interest in her life before. It made no sense for her to charge in like this now.

As the two teens began shuffling towards the living room, Sam's mother called out, "Uh uh." Their eyes found the same finger that had beckoned Freddie forth pointing towards Sam. "You go wait in your room."

The fact that her mother's behavior didn't make any sense had been feeding into a growing sense of outrage in Sam, but having her mother dismiss her like a servant sent her over her boiling point. Sam stood her ground firmly, planting her feet shoulder-length apart and keeping her hands on her waist. Mouth pursed and eyes narrowed, she demanded, "What are you trying to pull?"

Sam's mother's arms folded against her chest. "I'm obviously going to interrogate the young man."

The blond teenager's voice gradually rose in volume. "You've never interrogated my other boyfr ..." Her tongue thankfully froze in her mouth before the word completed. To be safe, her eyes suddenly shot a warning glare to Freddie, wordlessly commanding him to have never heard that slip of her tongue. After he looked away in dominated compliance, she corrected with a crimson complexion that was quickly spreading over her body, "dates before!"

"Well they've never come to the house before, Sam," whined her mother lightly. Or, the blond woman thought, made you change like this. She turned around and called over her shoulder, "Come on, boy." Both of the teenagers moved to follow her, forcing the woman to spin on her heel and calmly direct her daughter, "I told you to go to your room."

Her face a rebelliously devoid of emotion, she declared, "You're not the boss of me."

The taller woman answered, "I'm your mother."

"I stand by my statement," shot back Sam with a challenging smirk.

The two blondes mirrored each other's stances: arms folding, weight falling on the balls of their feet, and eyes narrowing dangerously. For the boy standing off to the side, happily not at the receiving end of the glares, the family resemblance was astounding. This was what Sam was going to look like when she grew up. Congratulations Sam, he thought with a deeper blush as his eyes took notice of a slender body covered in tight clothing.

The figure he had been admiring turned towards him suddenly with a dazzling smile. It was a practiced move, honed through years of dating experience. The inexperienced teenage boy didn't stand a chance. He had been effectively disarmed, and stood dazed with his mouth open slightly, ready to accept anything Sam's mother said as absolute truth. "You know, up until Sam was seven she had this really embarrassing habit she had to do before she could go to sleep." That being said, she aimed a raised eyebrow towards her daughter, as though to say, "Your move."

The crimson color had to have moved to the rest of her body by that point. If she became any more heated, she would probably die. Sam realized with a scowl that she had lost this round. There was no way she could let Freddie know about that. After one final, defiant glare at her mother, Sam turned around and stalked off to her room.

Freddie watched Sam's retreat with a sinking feeling in his stomach. When he fought with Sam, he knew he had at least a slim chance of holding his own ground. The last five minutes suggested that against this more experienced, feminine version of Sam he had no such chance. When he turned towards the woman he found the smile had disappeared, replaced with the same cold, calculating look she had fixed on him earlier. It felt as though she were weighing the contents of his soul.

The words, "This way, Romeo," trailed behind her as she disappeared through the living room door frame.

Once more Freddie bravely gulped down his emotions and followed after her.

* * *

Spencer kept his eyes staring directly ahead of him, where he knew they were supposed to be. The last time he had tried to even sneak a peek at his sister she had unleashed a face melting series of invectives at him, only half of which he understood. That meant she was pulling from Sam's secret stash.

The mood in the car was insufferably wrong. Car rides with Carly were supposed to be light, happy times with smiles and laughs and luminescent rainbows with unicorns frolicking on top of them. This was very clearly the opposite, with the tension in the air so heavy that he was having difficulty keeping his head upright and his hands on the steering wheel. He took a deep breath, and upon hearing the air escape from his mouth, an idea struck him. She couldn't cover his mouth with a glare. With a yell maybe, but that would be preferable to the oppressive silence. "So I thought you and Freddie were going out," he said.

Carly's attempt to bludgeon her brother with a withering look frizzled due to the fact that he had continued to look straight ahead. She returned her eyes to the road, her mouth set into a hard line that only separated long enough to release a terse, "You were wrong."

Spencer gave a shrug, glad that Carly appeared to be audibly accessible. He decided that the best way to keep the conversation light, and therefore alive, was to tease her a bit. The down-to-Earth Carly was always ready to laugh at herself. A small smile found its way to the corner of his mouth as he teased, "That cute little blush you had when you told me he was taking you to the movies suggested otherwise."

The brunette teenager stiffened slightly, warding herself against the memory. She had been embarrassedly happy, but that was then and now she had to tuck the recollection away for the sake of her friends. She had decided that this was for the best. "I guess I was wrong, too," she returned with a tinge of sadness.

The hint of sadness was enough to force the guardian to look at his younger sister in spite of the tongue lashing he expected to receive. She looked miserable but resolute, with watery pools of tears held back in her eyes only by fraying threads of willpower. It was as though she had undergone an emergency amputation of a limb to save her life, but missed it terribly. What had his poor sister just done? What had he agreed to on this supposedly ordinary Friday night? "It'll grow back someday," he whispered suddenly.

The words drew a, "Huh?" from Carly. She looked up into her brother's face and was astonished to find him on the verge of tears.

The guardian blinked suddenly and brought his tear-blurred attention back to the road.

Carly quickly shrugged the image of her near-weeping brother out of her mind and returned to the thoughts that were dancing around in her head. Judging by how reluctant they were to leave the comfort of the Internet chatroom, she had probably just sped up the relationship between her two best friends by a couple of years. Her brows twitched as a new thought entered the fray. Would this acceleration affect them positively or negatively? She hadn't really pondered the latter possibility before. What if she had just forced them to pull the trigger too soon? After all, Sam was stubborn and Freddie was shy. Sure, they had been "chatting" for months, but under entirely different circumstances. Neither of her friends would feel self-conscious since they would both believe that their real identities were safely hidden. Sam wouldn't be trying to put on the the excessive bravado she showed everyone but Carly, and Freddie wouldn't have to hide the sensitivity that society stubbornly maintained he shouldn't possess.

The more she thought about it, the more she realized just how badly she might have sabotaged what had been developing between the two of them. The next time she saw them, they might not even be on speaking terms. Freddie's heart would again be a clean slate, wiped entirely clean of Pam/Sam's presence. Leaving her once again alone in his heart with his mother.

Spencer eventually recovered enough for a second peek at Carly. It revealed a little sister's face that had entirely dropped its pained expression and now appeared serene and hopeful. He shook his head as he again faced the road before him. It looked like girls were always going to be a mystery to the overgrown boy and men everywhere.

* * *

Sam flipped off the television after a glance at her alarm clock revealed that she had been banished for 15 minutes. What could her mom be grilling him about? They weren't even going out. They'd just been spending their nights typing to each other about nothing and everything. Sam began to blush as she realized that what they had been doing was just as, if not more intimate, than going out to the movies every night. The blush was quickly replaced by a cold sweat as the girl realized that if Freddie admitted anything even close to what she had just reasoned out to her mother, the insufferable woman was going to hold it over her for the rest of her life. After all, she was still holding on to that old sleeping problem of hers.

After confirming through rigorous introspection that allowing her mother to think that Freddie was her boyfriend was a worse fate than letting Freddie find out about her discarded sleeping ritual, the girl left her room and began to sneak toward the living room.

What began as creeping evolved into crawling across the unoccupied dining room on her stomach. Upon reaching the door frame her mother and Freddie had stepped through, Sam stood up and placed her back against the wall, tilting her head towards the door to try to hear the torture her mother was putting Freddie through.

Her mother's voice cut cleanly through the air. "So? Like what you see?" she asked, a teasing, naughty tone enforcing her words.

Freddie's reply came in a cracking, nervous voice. "I … I don't think I should be looking right now."

"C'mon, it's not like Sam's going to find out," urged her mom, her voice leaning its weight on the boy.

"I … er," Sam could tell he'd surrendered by the quality of his stalling. "Yeah, it's nice."

"Just nice?" teased her mom. "Do you know how much work I had to put in to get those clothes on?"

"What the hell are you showing him!?" shouted Sam, bursting into the living room. The scene laid out before her was not what she had imagined it to be. Her mother was sitting closely to Freddie on the couch. Alright, that had been the same, but the woman was fully clothed and pointing to a book on Freddie's lap. A picture album.

"Er ... Sam," gulped Freddie, his face immediately shifting to a beet red color.

His guilty expression was like a warning flag thrown before Sam's face. Her feet launched her body forward before the boy could properly shut the book, and the page he had been looking at was saved by her extended right hand. Sam snatched the album out of his lap with her free left hand and opened it up to the picture he had been guiltily looking at. A four year old version of herself beamed back up at her, her sundress blown up to her waist by an impromptu spin on her toes.

Freddie shrunk into the couch as Sam lowered the album and revealed a picture of rage. The blond teenager's eyes had narrowed into pinpoints of hatred, and her mouth had fixed into a snarl with her lower teeth aggressively uncovered. Freddie's hands reflexively moved to protect his head from the inevitable rain of fists.

His defensive effort was ruled unnecessary because the girl's eyes immediately fixed themselves on her mother. "That's enough of that now, Mother," she said evenly, each syllable dripping with acid.

Glad that the heat was off of him, Freddie said lightly, "You shouldn't talk to her like that, Sam. She's your mo ..."

His last word withered away as soon as her eyes shifted onto him. He furthered his shrinking into the couch until she stated rather than demanded, "We're going. Now."

"But your mom was saying something about ..." again he was silenced by malice shining through blue orbs. Sensing a threat to entirely focus her anger on him, he stood up and hurried towards the front door.

Her smirk firmly aimed at his retreating figure, Sam moved to follow him. Her movement was halted by her mother, who stood up from the couch and grabbed hold of her elbow.

The blond woman's lipstick kissed mouth moved close to her daughter's ear and whispered, "Congratulations, Sam. I thought you were going to bring home another delinquent," Taken aback by the rare, unexpected praise, Sam only managed to gape at her mother as her face again began to burn fiercely. The taller blond grinned down at her and pushed her towards the front door with a whispered, "You should try to hang on to this one."

Sam aimed a puzzled face towards her mother before turning around and taking the handful of steps towards the front door. Upon catching up to Freddie, the boy opened the door for her and indicated that she should go first. Sam threw him an amused look before her hands found the small of his back and shoved him outside of her apartment. As he nearly tripped over his feet, in spite of her unfamiliar level of embarrassment, Sam found herself smiling. Why did it feel so good to push this one around? "Maybe I will, Mom," she whispered under her breath as she followed after him, slamming the door shut behind her.

* * *

Author's note: For anyone who's been waiting for this chapter for the unacceptably long period of time since I last updated the story, I truly apologize. If you're still reading, I really appreciate the loyalty. Since the last update, I've begun working seriously on an original story of my own. It has affected this story in two ways. First, it has sapped away my creative writing time. This includes time spent thinking about the plot and actually writing the story. Secondly, it has decreased the amount of time I watch television. It's difficult to write fanfiction when you haven't paid homage to the subject material in a while. In addition to the extremely appreciated reviews (including the ones urging me to get off of my butt and write the next chapter), I was recently inspired to take this story up again after watching a beautifully written and animated anime series that featured a love triangle of its own (True Tears for any fellow otaku who are interested). It was done so well that it reinvigorated my desire to continue working on my own.

Just a warning, this chapter is in danger of being severely edited at any moment. It feels "complete", but not entirely fleshed out. The only reason it's coming out in this form is because I wanted to get it out as soon as possible since I've been putting it off for so long. Please be assured that any such cosmetic edits would not affect the storyline in any way. They would just make it look prettier to my eyes. I'm a sucker for pretty.

I actually have more story written down and prepared at the time of this update, but I feel like this is a good end of chapter point. Well, as good as a set-up chapter can end. Prepare for a heavy helping of Seddie next.

See you next time (which should be sooner this time),

Falling Further


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